The owner of the Out of the Blue art gallery in Somerville has won a City Council hearing for her attempts to stay in the city-owned Armory arts building or get a new space if she’s forced to leave.
After years of contention with city staff, owner Parama Chattopadhyay will get clarity about her situation. The hearing is planned for 6 p.m. Wednesday under the auspices of the council’s Housing, Community Development and Equity Committee run by Kristen Strezo with Jon Link and Naima Sait.
An email sent to Strezo on Sunday seeking comment did not get an immediate reply.
The hearing is the result of a petition written by Chattopadhyay, who also gathered the needed 50 signatures of registered Somerville voters.
Building history
The 27,000-square-foot Armory at 191 Highland Ave. opened in 2008 as an arts building under private ownership, and those owners granted Chattopadhyay the Armory’s only live-work space as well as unit leases for the gallery. When the city did a $5 million eminent domain land seizure in May 2021 after the owners considered adding a business use, Chattopadhyay’s situation became murky.
The city was slow to pull together its plan for the building, causing concern for tenants such as event programmer Arts at the Armory and the gallery, which was founded by the late Tom Tipton three decades ago and has traveled from city to city, with stretches in Boston, Cambridge and Allston in addition to Somerville.
Maintenance lapsed, the building’s elevator broke and Chattopadhyay, known as Parma Chai, reported harassment from city staff and an incident threatening her safety during the time the building hosted a winter warming center for the unhoused. “The Arts Council and city government continues to direct initiatives to push it away,” she wrote in her petition, referring to the gallery.
Petition requests
The petition asks an end to “harassment and eviction attempts” and an extension of her live-work arrangement – but says that if Somerville decides to end the arrangement, “it must provide a similar living-work space, including a performance and art viewing space, comparable to what OOTB has at the Armory.”
At least a partial answer to this concern was given Feb. 11 by the office of mayor Jake Wilson: Chattopadhyay will not be required to leave before July 13, the date of awards of leases for the Armory under the city’s plan to keep it running as a publicly owned arts building. No residential use is allowed in the Armory plan, which ends the live-work arrangement for Chattopadhyay and partner Steve Asaro, but the gallery can seek to renew its run as a commercial space, according to a letter from Wilson’s chief of staff, Sarah Anders, that was shared with The Independent.
“The city is available to assist you and Mr. Asaro with relocation efforts. Your relocation package includes both funding assistance and help in finding another place to live,” Anders said in the letter.
“Let this gallery stay alive”
The petition also calls for transparency around Armory’s master plan committee membership and asks that “the committee’s decisions are not completely decided upon by the Somerville Arts Council.”
Chattopadhyay is going into the hearing without a lawyer, she said Monday, after spending $10,000 on battling with the city over several years of “discrimination and harassment.” She’s tapped into her own teacher retirement money to pay rent at the Armory, according to documents she shared. She’s said over the past years that she works two or three jobs in addition to running the gallery.
“I’m always struggling. But give me a place that’s reasonable, in Somerville or a similar place – Medford, somewhere around here. I’ll take it,” Chattopadhyay said in a call in February. “At least for Tom’s legacy, let this gallery stay alive. And I believe, because I’m a multispiritualist, that he’s protecting me in his own ways, and saying, ‘Keep on.’”