Viewed from the outside this summer, you’d hardly guess that Saline’s Two Twelve Arts Center was about to close its doors forever. Events like the colorful “Knit 1 Bike 2 Saline” scavenger hunt had participants searching all over town all summer long to find yarn-bombed bicycles. Inside the house on Michigan Ave., workshops and camps alongside an impressive list of art shows and projects filled the calendar right through the end of August.

But in late July, the mood was already nostalgic, with staffers laughing and chatting as they shared memories and future plans.

“We’re like a family. We don’t just support the arts; we support each other and the many friends we’ve made here over the years,” says director Margie Bovee. With a background in education and theater and a devotion to promoting and valuing artists, Bovee realized a dream when her family’s Massachusetts-based Cowan Slavin Foundation, then managed by her father, voted to support Saline’s arts center back in 2005. The Two Twelve Arts Center opened in the spring of 2006.

One of its original goals, and the heart of its mission, according to program coordinator Cindy Barnett, was to “help the community value art and artists, and we’ve done that.

“We really are a family. We’ve had people go through our programs and workshops and then go on to teach art or make community art installations elsewhere. One young woman who used to come to Two Twelve now teaches art in Dexter.” Barnett herself now works for Eluminous Studios in Saline, a for-profit incubator space for creative expression.

Like launching a child into adulthood, an analogy that resonated for the staff sitting around the lunch table, there comes a time to gracefully recognize when letting go is the next step.

“The fact is we’re closing at the end of the summer,” says Bovee, “The foundation can no longer afford to operate the center.” Bovee will next head to northern Michigan and continue other work with her family’s foundation.

“But we’ve met our goals and the core of our mission,” says Barnett. “We really are an arts community now. We’ve had the 212 Fiber Arts Guild, the Saline Potters Guild, and the Sidewalk Chalk Art. Businesses that originally thought we wanted something from them have partnered with us many times over the years, like when we did the windsocks project”–in 2010, they approached local businesses to ask if it would be okay to climb ladders and hang colorful windsocks from high atop their buildings. It was a community effort by Two Twelve Arts, the Saline District Library, and the Saline Recreation Center.

“It was beautiful. There’s a trust now after all these years, a collaboration, and a community that truly values art,” says Barnett.

The contents of the house will be auctioned before the end of 2016. Information at twotwelvearts.org.

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“The decision to close my Saline store wasn’t an easy one. I love Saline,” says My Urban Toddler owner Rosa Lee. “It’s where my husband and I live and where we’re raising our four children.”

Lee opened the store in 2006 in the Country Creek Plaza strip mall owned by her parents.

“I opened my first store not long after having my first child. When you have very young children, it can be really hard to get out and meet other parents,” says Lee. Desperate for conversation with other moms, she got a loan and co-designed the original space with college friends. It started with 3,200 square feet that Lee used for classrooms and kids’ parties. She even designed a mini toddler-sized city-themed play space. She expanded a year later and added retail. “I looked for smart products with good designs.”

Over time, Lee’s own family grew to include three more children. With the opening of a second store in Arbor Hills in Ann Arbor in 2013, Lee soon felt like every minute of her life was filled. “I was going back and forth between the two stores every day, caring for my family and then, three years ago, my father was diagnosed with brain cancer,” says Lee. Her father, eighty, is now cancer free. But the demands on her time over the past three years left her feeling like something needed to give.

“I finally took a vacation last spring and had time for reflection, and I asked myself how long I could sustain the pace I was keeping.” She returned from vacation and gave notice that she would close her Saline store at the end of June. She sold every last fixture at an inventory sale.

Since her family owns the shopping center, she has “a vested interest in what comes next in that space, and I promise to help whoever comes in, in whatever way I can.”