Valley News – Northern Stage is preparing to build apartments in White River Junction

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — To secure its future as a regional theater company, Northern Stage has announced that it will break ground in July on a new residential complex at the end of Gates Street.

The 18-unit complex, which will house visiting actors and theater artists, as well as permanent employees, was designed by Middlebury, Vt.-based Bread Loaf Corporation. Bread Loaf also designed the company’s Barrette Center for the Arts, which opened in 2015 on Gates Street in White River Junction.

There will be 10 studios, six two-bedrooms and two one-bedrooms available for both staff and visiting artists, said Jason Smoller, Northern Stage’s president. Staff rents will be subsidized, about 30 percent below market, he said.

To date, Northern Stage, which is in its 27th year as a theater company, has raised $8.2 million toward its $8.5 million campaign.

The $8.2 million comes from donations from private donors and family foundations — none of which are named — with strong ties to the Upper Valley, Smoller said. The exception is the Boston-based Couch Family Foundation, which serves the Upper Valley and is offering a 1-to-1 match for donors up to $300,000 through the end of August.

Northern Stage is now turning to local businesses, customers and Upper Valley residents to raise the remaining $300,000 needed to “get us across the finish line,” Smoller said. The Gates Street housing complex, which has received approval from the city of Hartford, should be completed by summer 2025, he said.

The development, which is expected to be completed in the summer of 2025, will cost $8.1 million, Smoller said. Of the $8.5 million the company is seeking to raise, $6.2 million will go toward the residential complex; $1.3 million will go toward the endowment; and $1 million will go toward the Impact Fund, which, a Northern Stage press release said, will serve “as both a boost to the operating budget and a way for the company to make significant investments.”

The remainder of the development’s costs will be financed through a mortgage, Smoller said.

“This is a calculated risk and we believe it is a financially sound plan. We know the value these homes will add.”

Discussion about building an apartment complex to serve the company’s staff and visiting artists began in 2019. Carol Dunne, artistic director of Northern Stage Producing, said in a phone interview: “It’s a living donation for this company to continue to flourish in our region. After building the Barrette Center and growing our audience, we realized our next task was to strengthen the company’s longevity and stability. It now costs a lot more money to produce theater than before the pandemic.”

The campaign to build new housing comes amid and as a result of an acute national shortage of affordable housing, which “makes it harder to attract workers,” Smoller said. Since 2021, rents have increased 18% in the apartments Northern Stage leases in White River Junction, Smoller said. Costs of utilities, insurance and food, among other things, have also increased.

Northern Stage has spent more than $400,000 annually on housing, Smoller said. On average, the company houses 150 actors, designers, technical artists and musicians during a season, he added in an email. It is a mandate from the actors’ union that theater companies provide visiting actors with free housing that is within walking distance of the theater; and if the housing is not within walking distance, the company must provide the actor or artist with a car.

Northern Stage currently owns three buildings in Hartford that house its employees: two are multiplexes and one is a mixed-use building with apartments and retail space. Northern Stage also has leased 16 apartments in Hartford to house visiting artists; those 16 apartments will be returned to the Upper Valley rental market when the complex is completed, providing more rental housing for a community that needs it, Smoller said.

And it should save $270,000 or more a year in housing costs, Smoller said.

The housing crisis in the Upper Valley has affected all employers, said Jennifer Kaye Argenti, chair of Northern Stage’s board, in a telephone interview.

“Not a week do you hear about organizations losing recruits because they can’t find a place in the community,” she said. “It was really important to get a handle on this. It’s really important for us to provide competitive and attractive housing to recruit the people we need.”

Lexi Spanier, the manager of Northern Stage’s costume shop, was living in Nashville when she applied for theater jobs across the country. She narrowed down the offers to a job in Bethesda, Maryland, and a job at Northern Stage.

Housing in Bethesda, near Washington DC, was “prohibitively expensive,” she said; Northern Stage, on the other hand, offered subsidized housing with utilities included and snow removal in the winter. She has been working for about two years now, and she and her partner currently pay $1,200 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in White River Junction.

The Northern Stage complex won’t be the only affordable housing development in the city.

This week marked the grand opening of the 42-unit Riverwalk Apartments, built on Maple Street along the Connecticut River. The apartments were developed by construction firm DEW Braverman with an agreement to sell the building to Twin Pines Housing Trust of White River Junction and Evernorth, a nonprofit focused on affordable housing in Northern New England.

“People want to have a positive impact on the housing crisis. Employers, organizations and institutions are becoming more proactive and understanding that they need to play a more direct role,” said John Haffner, affordable housing specialist at Vital Communities in White River Junction.

“The fact that Northern Stage is a smaller employer and is taking such a proactive role in developing a project like this itself shows how critical housing is to all employers,” Haffner said. One question that remains to be answered is whether the 16 rental units currently leased by Northern Stage will be affordable once they return to the broader rental market, he said.

“One of the challenges in an aggressive market to give those units back is that it doesn’t necessarily mean those units are affordable,” Haffner said. “In a place like the Upper Valley, where the cost of living is even lower, affordability is a loaded term.”

Argenti calls the development the culmination of a “long conversation and a long dream, so it’s really exciting to be at this moment and have such incredible community support for this next big step.”

For Spanier, the math is simple. “I don’t think I could afford to live here if I wasn’t in company housing,” she said.

Nicola Smith can be reached at [email protected].