Velocity Dance will celebrate the final days of the old Capitol Hill Value Village as temporary Capitol Hill art space V2 Saturday night.
The Last Dance V2 Farewell Performance Party starts at 9:30 PM at the 11th Ave venue:
Say good-bye to V2 with a special one-night-only performance party. Dance happenings by an emerging generation of artists take-over V2. Meet, greet, drink + DANCE. Join the send-off!
“All proceeds keep affordable community art space on the hill,” organizers say.
The project to put the building to use as a temporary performance, rehearsal, gallery, and community meeting space came together to begin 2016 as the redevelopment slated to change the block continued its final planning phases.
City officials hope the project will represent a blueprint for putting other temporarily available buildings to work to boost the arts in Seattle. Initiated by the Capitol Hill Arts District, and propped up by a $20,000 grant from the city’s Office of Arts and Culture, the 30,000-square-foot space was put to use for dance performance, offices, rental studios, and storage. It was also home to the event company One Reel, which staged its Bumbershoot operations out of V2 this year.
At the center of the project was Tonya Lockyer and Velocity, the dance nonprofit that has survived the waves of redevelopment that have claimed so many other Pike/Pine arts groups and is celebrating 20 years on Capitol Hill.
“Painters usually have a studio where they can stay in and work out of. For dancers, that doesn’t happen very often,” Lockyer told CHS about V2 earlier this year. “This means they can set up shop, they can bring in musicians and rehearse at full volume. It means that they can make a creative home here.”
The old auto row-era Kelly Springfield building won’t be demolished — entirely — but it is slated to be part of a near-total redevelopment of its stretch of 11th Ave for a project that will create 65,000 square feet of office space in three stories over the Kelly Springfield building. The shell of the old building will be connected on the south side to a narrow five story office building that will fill-in the block’s current sunken parking lot. The project’s final design still requires approval. It is up for review in January. The one-time Value Village — and big part of REI history — has landmark status that protects many of the structure’s historically significant elements.
As V2, the space has hosted a variety of events through the year including socially-minded art exhibitions and hundreds of neighbors and activists who gathered to plan local response following the results of the 2016 election. The building as it stands today complete with the never-fading scent of creosote from its old timber boards won’t finish its days of service with Saturday’s V2 party. Later this month, the space will go out with a bang with a holiday-flavored edition of the Punk Rock Flea Market.
