The Maryland Institute College of Art is renovating a building for graduate programs that anchors North Avenue in the Station North Arts and Entertainment District.
Scheduled to be completed fall of 2012, the renovations to Studio Center will include a new main lobby and gallery area, café, photography studio and lecture hall.
MICA has hired Whiting Turner as the general contractor and Cho Benn Holback+Associates as its architect for the 120,000-square-foot building.
Some renovations began in the summer with new glass windows and landscaping to the building’s front entrance, which faces North Avenue.
Sprucing up the building will show that there’s “more life going on in North Avenue,” says Ben Stone, executive director of the Station North Arts and Entertainment District. “Whenever one person invests in an area, other people take notice."
Recent renovations to the Load of Fun gallery and Joe Squared pizza’s addition of outdoor seating, combined with the MICA renovations, ought to breathe more life into that section of North Avenue, Stone says.
Writer: Julekha Dash
Sources: Ben Stone, Station North; MICA