Unsure of its future, an inner-city arts space has been letting staff go

Agata Stoinska has been letting go of staff in D-Light Studios, she says.

On Friday, Stoinska, the studio’s director, sent them off with a goodbye dinner, she says. “And the building is now closed to the public.”

The fate of the not-for-profit studio – which she opened in a 19th-century warehouse on North Great Clarence Street in 2008, and has hosted film  productions, photoshoots, live events and exhibitions – has been uncertain since October.

The trouble is that D-Light doesn’t have a lease.

Meanwhile, “the fire officer says the building has to be closed immediately”, says Sinn Féin Councillor Séamas McGrattan.

Dublin City Council, the building’s owner, has plans to renovate it to bring it up to fire-safety standards – and it needs to be empty for that, says McGrattan.

But Stoinska has been afraid to leave the building without assurance they can return, and she has been hanging on in the hopes that a long-term lease can be negotiated.

The council hasn’t provided a timeline for the renovations, nor has it offered any immediate support if D-Light Studios leaves the building, which is what she is looking for, she says.

She has been trying again after some meetings last year to meet with council officials to talk about their finances, fire-safety works and the lease since February, said Stoinska, but that hasn’t happened.

That’s been held up by personnel changes on the council’s side, said McGrattan on Friday. “The area manager has moved on, and another official has moved in, so it has delayed it.”

The situation straddles several departments within the council, he says. “There are a number of sections involved, and trying to get them all together, there isn’t a quick solution to this.”

Who should pay?

McGrattan, the Sinn Féin councillor, says it is his hope that D-Light can continue its work in the warehouse.

The council has given a letter of comfort to studio management about the possibility of a lease, he says. But he didn’t know the details of that letter, he said.

Stoinska says that the letter from November 2023 proposes a lease for 20 years. But she isn’t happy with the detail that, in order to facilitate a lease, D-Light would have to prove that it can cover 85 percent of the costs for remedial works for the building.

The letter doesn’t outline what remedial works it is talking about.

But Stoinska says those remedial works, which include fire-safety improvements, disability access and roof replacements, are outlined in D-Light’s 2018 business plan. “At the time, we priced that it would roughly cost €1.8 million.”

More likely, after six years, that estimate will be a lot higher, she says. “But why are they expecting that the tenant will pay?”

This proposal to begin negotiations for a lease if D-Light covered the cost of those remedial works confused Stoinska, she says. “What is that? Are we just buying the building for twenty years?”

Now, she is waiting for a meeting with the council’s Property Department to discuss this proposal, she says.

There is currently a wide gap between what the council and D-Light are looking for, McGrattan says. “We’re trying to narrow the gap between the two of them, but it’s slow.”

While this process drags on, Stoinska launched a GoFundMe page on 14 March and has been auctioning off the furniture and art in the studio, she says. “We’re selling off as many things as possible to get the money to cover the solicitor’s costs and keep us going.”

They also have to pay off bank loans they got to refurbish the ground floor, she says. “We had renovated one of the studios in September and opened it on the 26th.”

But they never got to use it, she says. “Because on the sixth of October, we had to close it down.”

Drawing out the process is depleting D-Light’s savings, as the studio has been using those to cover legal fees, lobbying, frequent repairs, and written proposals, she says.

Until February, Stoinska had been paying D-Light’s commercial rates for the building, even the areas out of use since the start of the pandemic.

She has also been setting aside a nominal rent for the council since it took charge of the building in 2019. It’s been sitting there as a sum because the council has never given D-Light their account details to pay into, because they haven’t had a lease, she says.

Labour Senator Marie Sherlock says that council’s actions are bewildering. “It makes no sense how DCC has handled what is essentially their property and their tenant. How they’ve now dealt with the current tenant is very sad.”

Searching for a solution

The future of D-Light Studios came up at the tail of the council’s Arts, Culture, Recreation and Leisure Strategic Policy Committee meeting on 26 February.

After a lengthy discussion about the Dean Arts Studio, Social Democrats Councillor Patricia Roe squeezed in a mention of D-Light before the session wrapped.

The owners were asking not to be put out of their space and that the council provide them the money to install fire alarms, Roe said.

The committee has seen what happens when buildings are taken back into the hands of the council, said Roe. “We know what happens. We’ve sat here over the last five years talking about empty buildings and trying to get them back into use.”

If Dublin City Council takes it over, the area would lose a really really good artistic space that has a lot of people employed and brings a lot to the area, she said.

McGrattan, who chairs the council’s Central Area Committee, told members at the committee meeting that local councillors have been working on it.

“We’re close to a solution on that side. I just ask we just be given slightly more time and hopefully we get a solution that’s agreeable to all stakeholders,” he said.

That said, Dublin City Council cannot commence any renovations until D-Light vacates the property, McGrattan said last Friday. “D-Light don’t want to vacate the building until they have assurances that they can go back in.”

As he sees it, D-Light have been given assurances that the council intends to put them back in, McGrattan said. “But ultimately, a lease is a matter for the councillors, and we don’t know who will be on the council after the June [local] elections.”

Stoinska says that if the council expects D-Light to be able to resume its cultural activities after the renovations, it will need to support them with a plan for financing the cultural program, she says. “The last six months have exhausted our resources.”

She still also wants the council to reconsider the current conditions on which it is prepared to offer the lease, with a temporary alternative location proposed during the interim period, she says.

“We need some solution figured out for that time when we’re not in the building, because we need to survive somehow,” she says.

Dublin City Council did not respond to queries sent last Wednesday asking if there is a timeframe for the remedial works, who would be covering those expenses, and whether it would arrange an alternative location for the studio during renovations.

The council has not provided any real clarity as to what exactly is happening, says Sherlock, the Labour senator. “They could have negotiated a fair long-term lease, and allowed for the renovations.”

“Mistakes get made, balls get dropped,” Sherlock says. “But what are they doing to save this artist space?”