The Art Center has been making, displaying, and teaching art for 106 years and owns its double storefront on W. Liberty downtown. From the mid-1990s to 2009, it also ran classes off-site at an “Art Factory” on Felch. That proved unsustainable financially, but now the center is looking at expansion again. “I’m not able to meet demand now,” says Klopf. “We need more space to offer expanded programming, to do more public school field trips, to offer adult ed classes in the summer because we’re full of kids!”

This time, “we’re trying to figure out how to grow and stay downtown,” says Klopf. “One of the cool things is adults will come and take classes and go to lunch or dinner or go to lunch or dinner and come over for a show.

“We have fifteen to seventeen thousand square feet right now, and thirty thousand would be ideal,” continues Klopf. “It’d give us added classroom capacity and better rental capacity for different events. It would be nice to expand the space to allow for cross-pollination as opposed to just visual, just music, just performance.”

They’re seriously considering the former city garage at 415 W. Washington–a place “everyone and their brother has taken a run at,” says Klopf. “The Art Center took a run at it before the recession and didn’t have any luck. There are some challenges with that property. It’s in the floodplain. It’s a very old building, and it’s not in the best condition. Rehabbing it or rebuilding it will be a monumental project with a big cost.”

Klopf estimates it could run up to $5 million. She figures the Art Center could swing a chunk by leveraging its building. For the rest, “it’ll have to be a partnership with the city, the community, and the Art Center. It’ll really be the city and the community that decides. We’ll have to run a capital campaign.” But she likes the potential there: “We could do programming in that space–and outdoor painting classes.”

But Washington “is just one of the locations that has potential for us,” Klopf says. She says the others are “confidential,” though she rules out the other former maintenance yard at 721 N. Main. Wherever it is, “it has to be sustainable,” says Klopf. “It has to be able to get through the next recession.”

Klopf cautions that “the Art Center is not going to start spending a lot of money on developing details of the proposal” for the Washington site. “I would like to get a commitment from the city first. I did mention to [mayor] Christopher Taylor that I had an interest in it. One of my concerns was that someone would scoop it up.”

“Residents have wanted an arts and culture center at 415 West Washington for years,” Taylor writes in an email. “We now have a chance to deliver. The Arts Center’s ideas are incredibly exciting and, if realized, would be a tremendous complement to the [long-proposed] Greenway and a benefit for everyone in Ann Arbor. There are lots of details to be worked out, but I look forward to doing what we can to get it done.”

Outgoing councilmember Steve Kunselman recently proposed using the W. Washington site for tiny houses for the homeless. Taylor likes the idea–but somewhere else. “I’m excited about bringing a tiny homes experiment to Ann Arbor, but I believe that 415 West Washington is not the proper location.”

If talk of revenue-driven models makes Klopf sound like a businesswoman, that’s because she is. “I have an engineering degree and spent most of my career in operations,” most recently at Current Motor, the electric motor scooter company on Varsity Dr. After Marsha Chamberlin, who’d led the Art Center since 1979, retired in 2012, the board asked Klopf to run it on an interim basis while they searched for a permanent director.

“I came in, and I fell in love with the Arts Center,” says Klopf. “I’m a creative person, but I have no background in art. But of all the things I’ve done in my life, I’ve never had more fun.” Within months, the “interim” was gone from her title.

Klopf doesn’t think a decision on 415 W. Washington can wait much longer. “I want to accomplish this in five years,” she says. “The condition of the buildings means something has to happen to it. It can’t be another five years, because you will have to tear it down.”