Lola Lott, center, is funding the entire restoration of Winnetka Congregational Church with her husband, Todd Lott, second from left. Also involved in the project, from left to right, are Brad Nitschke, Anastasia Munoz and Tony Wann. (Photos by Danny Fulgencio)
The 88-year-old church on Windomere at Twelfth looked like the project Lola and Todd Lott had been looking for.
They didn’t know quite what they were getting themselves into.
The Lotts bought the Winnetka Congregational Church for $330,000 in 2015. But turning it into the arts center of their dreams has been a struggle.
After nearly two years of zoning battles, painstaking restoration and turmoil with the city, they’re making it happen. Arts Mission Oak Cliff launches this spring.
It’s a for-profit arts space, currently funded entirely by the Lotts, that will offer workshop and rehearsal space for theater companies as well as studios and art classes. They’ll host summer camps, and in the fall, they’ll begin offering a conservatory for students at nearby Greiner Middle School. They hope to add a number of one-off after-school classes and events as well.
At the helm is Anastasia Munoz, an actor, director and teacher with years of experience on the Dallas stage.
The building, beautiful and dramatic as it is, gives the city’s theater community one major thing that’s lacking: Space.
It offers theater companies the opportunity to workshop plays at low cost, with a unique venue where donors can see their new work. It opens the door for experimentation, Munoz says.
“There’s such limited space available,” she says. “They really have to play it safe all the time. Now we have a place to play again and dive into the unknown.”
The Lotts hired a craftsman to work onsite restoring the church’s dozens of windows to historical accuracy. They also added restrooms and have plans for a wheelchair lift to bring the building into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. (Photos by Danny Fulgencio)
Munoz says she expects Shakespeare Dallas, the Dallas Children’s Theater, Kitchen Dog and many others to take advantage of the space. Cara Mia Theater will be the first to perform a play in the church’s former sanctuary this month.
Along with theater and performance-art work, Arts Mission Oak Cliff will host workshops, classes and studio space for technical theater, costuming and set design. They’re finishing out a commercial kitchen where cooking classes could be offered for adults and children. There’s a yoga and dance studio behind the sanctuary. The Richards Group donated a small sound booth. Artists and actors can do their own work and teach classes to earn some cash.
There’s nothing else like it in Dallas, Munoz says.
Lola Lott owns the post-production video-editing studio Charlie Uniform Tango, and Todd Lott restores old houses. The Lotts found themselves in the position to invest in a “legacy project,” and the church was perfect, Todd Lott says.
They are painstakingly renovating the church to qualify for historic tax credits from the state. One example of their dedication: They hired a craftsman to rebuild many of the church’s dozens of windows onsite.
The Lotts like how the exposed rafters look, but that wouldn’t be historically accurate, so a new ceiling is being installed in the sanctuary. (Photos by Danny Fulgencio)
Besides all new plumbing, electrical and air conditioning, they also had to figure out how to make the building compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Oak Cliff-based architect Alicia Quintans designed a space for a lift in a former electrical closet for that purpose.
The Lotts are spending around $600,000 to get the building up and running. At every turn, there are obstacles. It’s a project that would’ve been impossible to undertake as a moneymaking venture or with grants from nonprofits, Munoz says.
“Todd and Lola are patron saints,” Munoz says. “They’re independent investors who stayed the course. They’re truly rooted and invested in this.”
