Art studio, district agree to 3-year lease

Studio Channel Islands Art Center has a new home.

The membership nonprofit known as SCIART will move to a closed-school campus at 2222 Ventura Blvd. in Old Town Camarillo. The art center will occupy 12 of the 16 classrooms on the campus.

Trustees for the Pleasant Valley School District, which owns the property, approved a threeyear lease agreement at the July 7 special board meeting. The art center will pay the district 75 cents per square foot—or $97,000 a year—to rent 12 classrooms. Lease fees include ground maintenance but not custodial services.

“We are just so happy to be there—I just can’t tell you,” said Gretel Meys Compton, art center spokesperson and a printmaker artist.

For a decade the art center occupied a building at California State University Channel Islands until university officials chose not to renew a long-term lease in 2009. The university wanted the building for classrooms.

Studio space for artists will start at $128 a month, according to the art center’s website.

Meys Compton said artists will begin moving in on Aug. 1.

The campus had been the 30- year home of Los Primeros Structured School until 2007, when trustees changed the name of the school and moved it to another site. The district renamed the campus the Pleasant Valley Instructional Center and began leasing space to a county-run special education preschool, a Jewish preschool and a Head Start program.

Last August the art center moved its gallery into a remodeled building across the street from the instructional center. In February, the district began leasing a few classrooms on the campus to the art center.

That move upset preschool parents, who said the district didn’t tell them in advance that the art center and preschool would share the campus. Parents were further frustrated when the district moved the preschool elsewhere to free up more space for the art center.

The art center’s annual fundraiser, An Old-Fashioned Shindig, will take place Sat., Aug. 21 at the new studios. The event will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. with free family activities. The evening festivities start with cocktails at 5 and dinner at 7. Tickets for the evening event are $100.

For information or tickets, call (805) 383-1368.