REOPENING: GoggleWorks prepares shuttered glass studio for September relighting

After shutting down in January, the glass shop at this Reading, Pennsylvania, nonprofit is set for a fall re-opening.

In January 2011, the two glass furnaces at nonprofit arts center GoggleWorks were shut down despite a November fundraiser that raised $17,000. For a one-night event held at the hotshop, it brought an impressive return, but that sum paled against the annual loss of $70,000 for the glass program alone. Executive director Gust Zogas had identified the program as the single largest expense at the struggling Reading, Pennsylvania, facility and he could not justify the continued bleeding as he labored to get the organization’s finances under control. The closure was billed as “temporary” but no reopening date was set, leaving many to wonder if that would be the end of it.While Zogas might have been cast by some as the heartless executive shuttering what had been one of the most popular programs at GoggleWorks, he didn’t stop thinking about how to reopen the glass studio. “Our director was working all year, asking for help to reopen the hotshop,” GoggleWorks program director Dawnita Smith told the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet.

Zogas realized that he needed a subsidy that would buy the glass program some time to figure out a sustainable financial model. He settled on a three-year window and set about raising the funding to relight the fires. After a false-start with one generous businessman who was unable to deliver on some early promises because of the economic downturn, Zogas began to find more success with smaller sums promised by local businesspeople who made sustaining three-year pledges to help subsidize the glass program.

“I started talking to individuals I knew about this situation,” Zogas told the Hot Sheet in a telephone interview. “One person said I can do $1,000 a year. Someone else promised $2,000. After a while I had $21,000 pledged, which left me $19,000 shy of the $40,000 I felt we needed each year to subsidize the hotshop.” The board of directors approved the plan to reopen putting their faith in Zogas’s ability to wring the additional funding by the end of the year.

But how will the glass studio operate on $40,000 in subsidies when it had been losing $70,000? Zogas is betting that the facility can be operated more economically by more careful monitoring of usage and billing. He says: “I’m asking the incoming studio director to hover over it, treat it as if its your own.” The hiring of the new studio manager is about to be announced. Six interviewees were narrowed down to two and there will be an announcement on Friday about who will get the nod.

While the artist-in-residence program is on temporary hiatus for budget reasons, the reopened glass facility will feature classes, rentals, and arts events including a repeat of the “Get It While Its Hot” fundraiser from last year scheduled for November 19th. The studio itself will reopen by mid-September.

“Everyone who has set foot in the glass shop has said emphatically that it is a first-class facility,” says Zogas. “The people who put it into place wanted a first-class facility, without any consideration for revenues, unfortunately. But it’s an important and exciting part of GoggleWorks, and it will remain exciting to the public when it comes back online this fall.”

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