When people decide where to live or where to build, Olga Levina said, one of the first things they ask is simple: What is there to do?
For the founder and executive producer of Jersey City Theater Center, that’s why arts funding is business funding. It’s also why the $50,000 grant her organization received last week from Newport’s 40th anniversary event matters beyond the stage.
“When you build something, a business or apartments, real estate, people gravitate, and the first questions they ask: What is here to do?” Levina said.
Jersey City, she said, “always had that community feel,” and the arts help it compete with New York City for residents and companies. When that happens, she said, business flows Jersey City’s way and the city grows.
Local restaurants see it directly, she said. They fill up on show nights and struggle when there’s nothing on, especially in neighborhoods away from downtown.
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Levina has numbers behind the argument.
Her organization’s Voices International Festival in June drew performers and audiences from around the world, filling hotels and restaurants.
The festival was funded through Phase II of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority’s Activation, Revitalization and Transformation program, a $15 million effort using federal pandemic recovery money to back arts and placemaking projects near rail stations in 31 municipalities, including Jersey City.
It was not an easy grant, she said.
“They’re looking at every invoice,” Levina said. “I’m so not used to it.”
But she said the state’s decision to invest in the arts as an economic engine has paid off.
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The Newport money comes at a pivotal moment. Levina said the theater center is taking over White Eagle Hall, a venue she said draws about 200,000 people a year, where it plans to combine theater and world music and give more artists a place to develop and present their work.
The organization is small: about seven people, counting part-timers. But it works with 250 to 300 artists a year and reaches about 10,000 people, including about 7,000 through school programs that use theater for storytelling and mental health, and bring in international artists to perform and teach.
Levina, who has worked in Jersey City for 20 years, said she has never seen the kind of support for nonprofits that the LeFrak and Simon families showed last week. It sent a message to the whole community, she said:
“You are important. Nonprofits are important, and philanthropy is important, especially at times like today.”
