Art Center seeks lift for elevator

MOUNT CLEMENS — Shafted by a weighty repair bill, the Anton Art Center is turning to the Macomb County community to help raise enough money to cover the cost of fixing its elevator.

“I’ve learned a lot about elevators in the last several weeks,” said Matt Matthews, Anton Art Center executive director. “There’s not just a warehouse with elevators sitting in it. They’re all built-to-order. Fabrication is underway. The elevator is being constructed off-site. All the materials will be at the Art Center in the next couple of weeks, mid-May, and the completion of the project will be done mid-summer.” 

After around two decades of service and a string of issues in prior years, the Anton Art Center’s single elevator broke to a terminal degree in December 2025. The 20-year-old computer and internal parts had reached the end of their operating lives — and became an active hazard to human life.

“It was impacting the door-closing device,” Matthews said. “Doors wouldn’t open. Doors wouldn’t close. The elevator doors close and (when) you stick your arm (in front of the door), it hits your arm and it bounces open. This elevator didn’t do that. Not only were people getting stuck in the elevator and the elevator wasn’t coming when called, the elevator was unsafe.”

Work being done to the elevator is essentially like building a new one. The existing infrastructure and vehicle will remain, but everything else is being replaced and modernized.

“There had been numerous repairs prior to (the elevator breaking) that we had made, and it just didn’t make sense to keep trying to fix it,” said Laura Fournier, the Anton Art Center’s accountant and a Mount Clemens city commissioner. “It just wasn’t economical at that point. We know we need a new one. We just might as well bite the bullet and do it.”

The elevator was taken offline midway through the Art Center’s Holiday Art Market, making both staff and guests directly aware of the mobility challenges that the Art Center presents to anyone. The Carnegie Library-turned-gallery and workspace is divided between four levels — a gallery and office space on the top floor, another gallery and bathrooms on the first floor, a landing area where the guests enter the Art Center and the basement floor where classrooms and the kitchen are located — all of which are accessible either by stairs or the now-inoperable elevator. To say this has been an accessibility disaster for the Art Center is an understatement.

“Accessibility is not optional for us,” Matthews said. “It is essential to our mission, and this has created a burden to that. We are doing everything we can to make sure people are aware of the elevator situation (and) the impact the elevator is having on our programming. We are posting things on social media channels, we have updates on our website, we are sending regular emails communicating about the elevator and we’ve had folks come into the building who are unable to use the space because the elevator is not available.”

Partner organization Dutton Farm has had to turn some of its members with physical disabilities away from attending the Art Center. Some caregivers and dementia patients interested in the “Afternoons at Anton” memory cafe program, taking place on the last Thursday of every month from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m., have had to halt their plans for attending due to the lack of mobility accommodations. Even Fournier’s own husband has had to cancel plans for attending a ceramics class at the Anton Art Center with his siblings due to complications from multiple sclerosis — complications that would have been accommodated by an elevator.

While the broken elevator has presented the Art Center with numerous issues, Matthews and the rest of the Art Center team have been able to find some resolution. For one, the Art Center has pulled into its collections and partnered with community organizations to hold exhibitions outside of the center. The Recreational Authority of Roseville & Eastpointe is showcasing the “The Traveling Art Collection” on the walls of its 18185 Sycamore Street headquarters in Roseville, while art classes have a long history of being held off-site with community organizations around Macomb County. 

As for the elevator repair itself, that will be done. A lease renegotiation between the Art Center and the city of Mount Clemens in January means the city is paying for the elevator. The Art Center, on top of its annual $1 rent, has $156,600 in interest-free repair costs and fees it owes the city by the start of 2028. The Art Center is also looking to recoup its exhausted capital projects budget, hence the center’s $210,000 appeal to the community.

Around $80,000 has been raised already between the center’s own capital projects fund and donations from community members and organizations. A dinner and auction fundraiser will be held at the Italian American Cultural Society in Clinton Township on Thursday, June 18 with proceeds supporting the elevator project. Other fundraisers are being worked on. Donors looking to directly support the Art Center’s elevator fundraiser can do so online at theartcenter.org/elevator. Checks can be sent to 125 Macomb Place, Mount Clemens, MI 48043.

“We have approximately 5,000 people come through the art center every year,” Matthews said. “If every one of those people gave $10 to this project, that would make a significant impact.”

Matthews has said donors will be recognized by the Art Center for their support, up to and including naming rights for the elevator. 

Call Staff Writer Dean Vaglia at (586) 498-1043.