Reposted with permission. Original article by Tracy Ross, Colorado Sun.
Participants in Fraser’s Plein Air @ Altitude event make art out of the dramatic scenery that envelops Grand County. In 2020, the town of Fraser donated a choice piece of property along the Fraser River to Fraser Valley Arts, a nonprofit that has raised $4 million for a sprawling new performing arts center they hope will become the economic anchor of the town of 1,500.
When Timothy Hodsdon was a lithesome young man of 25 in 1994, he moved to Grand Lake from Alaska and fell “completely in awe of the sweeping landscapes of the Fraser Valley” and the “raw, untamed feeling of Grand County,” which he saw through the eyes of a budding artist who wouldn’t have dared call himself that back then.
Then he came out, met his first boyfriend and relocated to the train-station town of Fraser, which sits along U.S. 40 between Winter Park and Granby.
At the time Fraser was a rough-around-the-edges place whose claim to fame was being the Icebox of the Nation due to winter temperatures that would drop to 40 below zero.
But for Hodsdon, Fraser was where people could be their authentic selves, which for him meant unleashing his inner artist. With his new beau, he created a little literary mag called the “Specked Tater” and started brainstorming another, the “Snow Spanker,” with a naked skier centerfold in each issue, he said.
The Specked Tater lived for a while and the Snow Spanker never quite got off the ground (“I don’t know if I should even be telling you about it!” Hodsdon said). But Fraser’s vibe inspired him to start doing collision art – the smashing together of different disciplines – sculptures and paintings, supported by a community with “a deep connection to the place that didn’t apply any expectations on me,” he said.
“If you were going to live in Winter Park, you needed to be a skier, but in Fraser you just needed to be yourself,” he added. Proof of that was long before Pride festivals became the norm in small towns across Colorado, Fraser had a Pride parade. “’Just Fraser’ became a pretty cool thing to be, in my book,” he said.
Cassidi Peterson, director of Fraser Valley Arts, stands in front of one of many murals across the small town between Winter Park and Granby. The murals were painted by winners of the annual Fraser Mountain Mural Festival. Peterson is helping spearhead an effort to turn Fraser into an arts mecca in the mountains. (Tracy Ross, The Colorado Sun)
But a few years ago, Fraser leaders started to think the town needed some branding to pump up the economy, and its artsiness surfaced as its identity.
The town has always supported artists like painter Elizabeth Kurtak whose gallery on East Eisenhower Drive has been open since 2003; watercolorist-ski guide-rafting outfitter Greg McFadden, who painted and held house readings at his place behind Doc Susie’s historic cabin on Byers Avenue; and Charles Clayton, whose family helped settle Fraser in the early 1900s and who wrote a book about Fraser filled with historical photos and his own snaps. Today a host of other artists live in Fraser.
In 2020, Steve Fitzgerald, a ceramics artist and businessman, was on the town’s public arts committee, which had promoted new and longstanding art events including the Fraser Mountain Mural Festival and Fraser Fire & Ice, both with great attendance.
But then-Mayor Philip Vandernail wanted to go bigger and late that year, he convinced the town to donate a choice piece of property next to the Fraser River to the arts committee to build an arts center.
“They came to me and said we’ve got this idea as part of helping to rebrand the city and create a real cultural enrichment for the citizens,” Fitzgerald said.
“I’d never really done anything like it as most of my life has been corporate life, but I said yes and we formed the 501(c)(3) Fraser Valley Arts with the help of the town and their lawyer. In 2021 we really got going with fundraising. We’ll close this year with at least $4 million. And we have a chance at $6 million if we get a Colorado Community Revitalization Tax Credit from the state, which we’re a finalist for.”
The planned 19,000-square-foot center has a build-out cost of between $8 million and $12 million, said Fraser Valley Arts Director Cassidi Peterson. It will sit along the Fraser River on the east side of U.S. 40 and anchor Fraser’s forthcoming river walk district, a few-blocks-long mixed-use zone tucked behind a couple of businesses and near a mural park that anchors the annual Fraser Mountain Mural Festival. An almost-life-size bronze statue of the writer Jack Kerouac, who passed through Fraser a few times on road trips like the one he wrote about in his cult novel “On the Road,” is already there.
A rendering of the the 19,000-square-foot arts center Fraser Valley Arts plans to build by 2028. Cassidi Peterson, director of the non-profit, says it will have a theater, gallery, maker spaces, teaching spaces and a bar or coffee shop. (Courtesy photo)
Residents living in deed-restricted affordable housing currently under construction will be able to saunter over to the two- or three-story center that Peterson says will have a theater, a gallery, creator spaces, teaching spaces and a bar or cafe.
Most of the money Fraser Valley Arts has raised so far has come from private donations, said Fitzgerald. Their goal is to raise at least $6 million, and borrow the rest via a Colorado Education and Cultural Facilities Authority bond, Peterson said. “But one of the things I think is really cool is the town of Fraser, the town of Winter Park, the town of Granby, the county, the Winter Park-Fraser Chamber of Commerce, the Grand Foundation, all of the municipalities and big institutions in the valley have been significant financial supporters of this, because they see the benefit, which is twofold,” Fitzgerald said.
As an “economic magnet” drawing people to the river walk district, the center will have an estimated $2 million a year positive economic impact on the community “that is beyond what people are paying for tickets,” he added.
They already have funding from a Colorado Department of Local Affairs grant that’s paying for water, sewer, gas, electric and fiber optics in the neighborhood. And Amtrak has service from Union Station to Winter Park, so “we’ll be promoting ‘it’s July, it’s 95 degrees on the Front Range, come on up, go to a show and cool off this weekend,’” Fitzgerald said.
“But another thing I think is unique about our aspirations is we really envision this place as not just a fancy, pinky-out art center, but more of a community center. I want people in there 300 days a year. We want to collaborate with other not-for-profits, even maybe offering them some space if they’re willing to do it. The idea is it will be as egalitarian as the town is.”
And that could have the ripple effect of telling new, young, not-confident-enough-to-call-themselves-artists artists like Hodsdon once was that in Fraser they can be whatever they want.
