Arts Center And Creative Hub To Debut In Bayside This Fall

BAYSIDE, QUEENS -- Bell Boulevard may be overflowing with restaurant and bar options, but Gregg Sullivan has long sensed Bayside residents were hungry for something more. He found the answer in art.

That's why the Bayside native turned local celebrity decided to open an arts center, which he hopes will become a neighborhood hub for creativity. The Bayside Center for the Arts he envisioned would have it all: A digital studio, an art gallery and a performance theater. Now, after years of planning, that center will finally open its doors at 41-23 Bell Blvd in September, Sullivan told Patch.

"The arts center was all about bringing back a sense of community," he said. "It's a way of giving the community their identity back, of giving Bayside their town back."

Sullivan said he and his team are in the midst of steam cleaning and painting the center's storefront for what will likely be a mid-September opening. The roughly 3,000-square-foot building on Bell Boulevard has been vacant for six years, and he began eyeing it for the arts center years ago as executive director of the Bayside Village Business Improvement District.

"Everybody gave up on it, but I just wouldn’t give up," Sullivan said. "This is too good of an opportunity for this town not to have."

The arts center will be split into two sides, he said. The front half will hold a gallery space featuring ever changing exhibits from local artists. In the back, there's a 70-seat theater for shows from local musicians, comedians and other performers.

Sullivan also plans to use the space for open mic nights and TED Talk-esque events where locals can take the stage for 20 minutes at a time to share their life stories.

"We're going to help create a whole new genre of storytelling," he said.

But Sullivan said his favorite part of the center will be the digital recording studio that residents can use to make their own video blogs.

"There's a whole new wave of Youtubers and video bloggers," he said. "We'll have green screens, microphones and lighting equipment for them to create their own videos."

Sullivan is eying several grants that would make the art center's digital studio free to those who need it. If they do have to charge a fee, it would be "something minimal," he said.

"I want to see really incredible artwork and videos coming out of this arts center," he said.

Much of Sullivan's background is in TV and film production. The Bayside native noted he worked for several years in Manhattan as technical director for CBS before moving out to Los Angeles to start his own film studio, where he worked on movies such as Forest Gump and Pulp Fiction.

He returned to Bayside in 2007 to care for his sick mother but felt the neighborhood, once bursting with life, had become "depressed."

"Bayside had always been the central hub of everything, and it just had kind of lost its luster," Sullivan said.

He would later host several town halls to ask locals what they felt the neighborhood needed to get back on its feet. One resident's response has stuck with him to this day.

"It was a call to make Bayside relevant again, and I heard it," he said.

Soon after, he launched Bayside Live TV, a local news station that now operates not far from the future Bayside Center for the Arts on Bell Boulevard. He used the show to test out the concept of an art center last year, and it was a hit.

"When we did that first test run, no one knew what to make of it," Sullivan said. "We started realizing there really is a hunger for it in this town."

Now, he believes the arts center is the key to pushing Bayside's revival forward. He hopes it will give locals a reason - bars and restaurants aside - to hang out on Bell Boulevard again, and give outsiders a reason take the train into Bayside.

"I feel like we watered a flower that was dying," he said. "Now it's blooming again."

Lead photos courtesy of Google Maps/October 2017 and Lon Blais/Bayside Center for the Arts