We are once again in our spring transition. This long snowy winter gave us time to catch our breath, settle in and forge new friendships. It was punctuated with new forms of celebration — an amazing New Year’s party in Kaspar House with Björn’s fireworks and the best awards ever given; a Fasching party with dancing and craziness; and wonderful evenings spent getting to know our community in its new constellation. Already in late fall a small “Community Center Group” was formed to develop a collective picture of what our community center would need to encompass. Small and large meetings, trips to other buildings and other communities, and lots of research took us into early winter. The architects, the Community Center Group, the Building Committee and the Board all helped to make sure that this building will serve the future needs of the community. We are now celebrating spring with the final details of the design, which we are excited to share with you in this newsletter.
All of us here already love our new hall and can envision it standing at the top of our drive to welcome our visitors. As with most things at Heartbeet, it has ended up better than we could have imagined.
A Gathering Space
This building will provide the space for the maturing of our potential as community; it will be a gathering space for social, educational, and cultural events for Heartbeet and beyond. With limited numbers of building sites at Heartbeet, it is a multi-faceted building. Its center will be the theater/gathering space. It will also house a processing kitchen, a community library, therapy rooms, and administrative space. It will enable us to collaborate and share musical and dramatic performances with others. We look forward to preparing plays that we can take outside as well. This inclusive environment will celebrate differences through arts programs for a diverse adult population, providing a more gentle and non-competitive environment for creative expression.
We are excited to expand our food processing so we can eat more of our home grown food. We are dreaming of making cheese and increasing what we put in both cooler and freezer. Food processing is an art that many in this community feel deeply connected to—this kitchen will make us more sustainable for the future.
A Milestone
The Community Center is living in the realm of potential; it is a milestone in the history of the community, offering opportunities to expand programing and to collaborate on many levels with local business and cultural endeavors. This is a 2.2 million dollar building, and to date we have raised $700,000—it is a big leap to get to where we need to be, and it will take extraordinary gifts to get us there. We really need your help to take the next step so that we can confidently hire a general contractor and bring this building from imagination to reality!
This is a big moment that calls on all of us who feel strongly about Heartbeet to give!
With gratitude for your generosity and a hopeful heart filled with pictures of this amazing new space.