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The Enterprise Zone Commission of the Economic Development Authority announced Monday it has received a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Interior to restore the former J. Antonio Jarvis School building.
The three-story building is situated within the Garden Street-Upstreet Enterprise Zone on St. Thomas, according to a released statement.
The restoration is being done in partnership with the V.I. Museum Civic and Cultural Center to create a facility to serve as a central hub for performing, visual, and commercial arts. The grant funding itself is earmarked for new floors, windows, doors, repainting of walls and interior painting.
According to the commission’s release, the nonprofit will provide talent in the form of artists, artisans, tradition bearers, cultural practitioners, storytellers, musicians, dancers, and folkloric groups.
The facility will provide “the community with a space to express, share and cultivate traditions, wisdom, art, and talents,” the release stated. “The J. Antonio Jarvis building will provide rooms for the restoration of an educational institution in the Upstreet neighborhood.”
EZC Managing Director Nadine Marchena Kean said the community has been without an education institution for many years, but “with this revitalization project VIEDA is moving closer to economic prosperity for the Upstreet community.”
Though not immediate, the long-term plans for the museum, culture, and civic center “will entail a historic and modern chronology of the history and culture of the territory, exhibition spaces for collections, art and cultural exhibitions, and public areas,” the release stated.