At about 2 p.m. April 16, a group of close friends — practically family — left the shores of Lake Erie to begin a fishing trip.

Within about four hours, they had caught their limit and started back.

None were seen alive again.

About all that’s known for sure is Bryan Huff, 31, Amy Santus, 33, Andrew Rose, 33, and Paige Widmer, 16, spent their last hours doing something they all loved: fishing.

At 4 p.m., Myranda Gerity texted her cousin Paige and they had a short conversation about what they were doing.

At 4:30 p.m., Andy’s boss at Home Slice Pizza in Toledo called him to say he wouldn’t be needed at work that night.

Around 6 p.m., the group had caught their maximum allotted number of fish and posted a video of the final catch.

At 6:15 p.m., Bryan called his father to say the group was on its way back.

At 6:30 p.m., Andy’s friend Ben DeWit called about dinner plans they’d made. Andy said he’d gone fishing and would probably be late.

DeWit was the last person to speak with anyone on the boat.

By 9 p.m., family members began to worry and started calling around.

The boat was reported overdue at 2 a.m. April 17 and by 3 a.m. the Coast Guard began a search that, for some families, would last weeks.

Shortly after 6:30 a.m., the boat, a 21-foot Tracker Tundra, was found empty, sitting bow up but with minimal damage, according to an investigation report from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR).

The search continued throughout the day as family members gathered at Turtle Point Marina in Oak Harbor, waiting for any word about their loved ones.

Around 11 a.m., the bodies of Paige and Amy were recovered. Both women were wearing life jackets; Paige’s was unzipped.

It would be almost three more weeks before Bryan’s body was discovered; two days after that, Andy’s body was found.

Andrew Rose

After 22 days of waiting, Michele Rose planned her son’s funeral around the theme “Gone Fishing.” Approximately 200 people gathered to eat the fish and venison Andy had saved in his freezers.

“Everything came full circle,” Michele wrote in an email to Toledo Free Press.

As a child, sandy-haired, blue-eyed Andy would waddle down to the nearest pond to fish with his babysitters. As he grew up, he dreamed of being a game warden. Even as a young boy, he had the patience to pursue fishing all the time, his mother said.

“Every once in a while he had a trip that was so special that kept him wanting to go back again and again and again, for the rest of his life,” Michele said. “He was hooked, even when the fish weren’t.”

After graduating from Maumee High School, Rose went to college for a bit but decided not to continue and went into modeling instead. He was good-looking and always had women interested in him, DeWit said.

“He had his modeling days where he was a model down in Miami and all of that,” DeWit said. “He’d tell me all the stories of all the things he did. ‘I hung out with Pharrell and we went out on his boat.’ And he’d hang out with Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. ‘I got picked up from the hotel in a Bentley that was waiting for me.’ Then he’d show all the pictures to back it up.”

But after struggling to maintain a steady income in modeling, Michele said, Andy decided to come home to Ohio. He began working as an interior home remodeler, combining skills learned from his mother, an interior decorator, and his grandfather, a carpenter and tradesman. One of his projects was featured in a Better Homes and Gardens issue on kitchens and baths.

DeWit met Andy when they worked together at Don Pablo’s after Andy’s return to Ohio. DeWit said Andy was his best friend and godfather to his 6-year-old son, Kamden. The pair liked to go wakeboarding and skiing on DeWit’s boat.

“He was a great guy,” DeWit said. “I have two children. He’d come and take them out to do things. My kids loved and adored him, and they’d drop what they were doing and jump into his arms when he came in the door.”

Michele described her son as someone who had many friends and liked to stay active.

“Andy was an easy-going, T-shirt and jeans type of guy,” she wrote. “Although he took pleasure in going out and trying new restaurants, he was just as keen enjoying the simple comforts of a grilled meal right in his backyard. Andy’s athletic build was evidence of his lifelong pursuit of health and balance; he worked out regularly.”

Matt Brown, Andy’s boss at Home Slice Pizza, said Andy was a people person who was always going on to the next adventure.

“It just came as such a shock,” Brown said. “With Andy, he took care of his body, he liked being outdoors. He was always out with his dog or doing something active.

“The biggest thing about Andy was that he had a thirst for life. He was always doing something. He was always looking to help.”

Brown had told Andy he might need someone to cover a shift April 16, but called around 4:30 p.m. to let him know he didn’t need to come in.

“He said, ‘Well, that’s great because I’m out fishing, so I wouldn’t have been able to make it in,’” Brown said.

DeWit said about every other Wednesday, he and Andy would get sushi from Spicy Tuna in Holland. They had talked about meeting there April 16.

“He wasn’t responding to my texts,” DeWit said. “It was just very odd for him.”

“Hey, what time,” DeWit texted.

“?” He sent in the next text.

Still no response.

DeWit called, and Andy answered his phone.

“Hey, sorry man,” he told DeWit. “I ended up going fishing last minute. I’m going to be late. I can hit you up when I get back.”

DeWit said it wasn’t a problem, that he could do something else.

That would be the last time anyone heard from Andy, Bryan, Amy or Paige.

Both DeWit and Michele said the waiting process was difficult.

“It was just never-ending agony,” DeWit said. “It was scary [wondering] if we were going to find him, when we were going to find him. It wasn’t the normal grieving process. It was so challenging for his mother.”

DeWit said pockets of Andy’s friends would have dinners and get-togethers while they waited for news. Many of them still keep in touch with his mother, he said.

Michele raised her son as a single mother and said the two had a close relationship.

“The unimaginable things that I would never dare think about now consume my every thought,” Michele said. “Losing a child is a parent’s worst nightmare. Grief that follows is a lonely road.”

Bryan Huff

Bryan Huff was also a fisherman from a young age. His father, Ralph “Butch” Huff, would take him out fishing. It was what they both loved to do, he said.

“He would say, ‘Dad, can I fillet it?’ And I said, ‘No, the knife’s too sharp,’” Butch said. “So I took him to the fair and he was maybe 4 or 5 years old and he caught some goldfish. The next morning, I woke up and my wife said, ‘You gotta get down here and see this.’ I go downstairs and he’s at the kitchen table. He had taken a butter knife and filleted his goldfish.”

Bryan’s sister Kimberly Hawkins said their father taught Bryan a tremendous amount about hunting and fishing.

“Bryan dedicated his life to the outdoors since he was a very young child,” Hawkins wrote in an email to Toledo Free Press. “My dad showed him the ropes and guided him through many fishing and hunting trips and experiences, which built my brother to be the amazing outdoorsman he was. It was more than a passion to him.”

Bryan was known to be an experienced boater.

“That was the hardest part,” Huff said. “He was very experienced out there.”

Hawkins said she and Bryan bonded through his passion for boating and her work at Tracker Marine Boat Center at Bass Pro Shops. Bryan would call, text or stop into the shop weekly, if not daily, to talk about boating products.

“It usually would start as a prank of him calling my work phone and changing his voice, and I would fall for it every time,” Hawkins said. “That is exactly the person he was. Always joking around and playing pranks, which I truly, 100 percent, believe he picked up from our father. He was the master of pranks. And he had the best poker face you’ve ever seen to back them up. He could impersonate voices to disguise his own just to get a laugh.”

Hawkins said her brother played a big role in her wedding as her husband Ron’s best man.

“They shared an everlasting friendship that started in high school, that my husband will forever remember and cherish,” Hawkins said. “Ron was introduced to many things and experiences because of Bryan. They were fishing and hunting brothers as well as brothers-in-law.”

With Amy, his girlfriend, Bryan owned Oak Harbor’s Black Swamp Ohio Outdoors, a hunting and fishing business. Now his father runs the business.

“They got the lease kind of late in the year, and they didn’t have time to plant their marshes like they’re supposed to be,” Huff said. “His and Amy’s dream was to put an addition on the lodge, with the marshes all planted and with new duck blinds. We got the new addition up, we got new showers and the marshes all planted.”

The business’ Facebook page is full of commemorations and memories of Amy and Bryan from those who hunt and fish at the lodge.

“Bryan knew everybody. Everyone knew Bryan,” Huff said. “At his showing, so many people showed up they couldn’t even get in the place. There was no place to park. People parked at the McDonald’s across the street. I remember the funeral home saying they only printed about 200 of the cards that they’d pass out. They were up to 1,000 of the memorial cards.”

“Though my family has faced the severe pain and heartache of losing our brother and son in such a tragic accident, we have also been overwhelmed to learn of all the people Bryan has touched and impacted during his life here on Earth,” Hawkins said. “Every time I drive to or near the lake, I think of Bryan’s life, and all the memories it holds. What a wonderful life he lived in his 31 years.”

Amy Santus

Amy and Bryan going out on the boat was a common occurrence, their family and friends said.

Hawkins said the two would hunt and fish together, and Bryan taught Amy what he knew.

“I don’t know exactly when Bryan met her,” Huff said. “But these guys were two peas in a pod. Amy loved to fish, and Bryan got her into the hunting part of it.”

Amy was finishing up her nurse practitioner degree. She and Bryan lived together in Perrysburg and were “inseparable,” Huff said.

In August, Mercy St. Charles Hospital installed a memorial for Amy in honor of the work she did on staff there.

“It’s been tough on all of us,” said her father Albert Santus. “Employers, family, friends. It’s been really tough. I prefer not to speak about it.”

According to friends, Amy and Bryan were a great match.

“When Amy came into Bryan’s life romantically, we could all see a change in him,” Hawkins said. “I truly believe that she gave him an outlook on life that had never crossed his mind before. He was happy and it showed. They were perfect for each other. Balanced each other out. They were soul mates.”

Paige Widmer

Sixteen-year-old Paige Widmer, who lived in Leesville, South Carolina, with her mother, looked up to Amy, said Gerity.

“She just adored Amy,” Gerity said. “On the way to Ohio, that’s all Paige talked about was going fishing with Amy. She really looked up to her.”

Paige would often travel to Ohio to visit her father, Troy Widmer, who is married to Amy’s sister.

Gerity described Paige as “free-spirited” and nonconfrontational. Although the two were cousins, they were more like sisters, Gerity said.

Usually, Gerity said, she and Paige would cry when Paige had to leave. This last trip back to Ohio, however, Gerity had the chance to tag along.

She almost went with the group on the April 16 fishing trip, but decided to have dinner with her aunt instead. The last time she saw her cousin — her sister, as she referred to Paige  — was that day at noon.

“She was just so full of life,” Paige’s mother Kelly Wade said. “She was always at the center of attention and loved being around everyone, even as a small child. She was always giving to those in need.”

Some of her favorite things to do were playing volleyball and spending time with her family and friends.

“She was always making sure her friends were OK,” Gerity said. “She was in sports medicine, and she just wanted to care for people.”

Wade said Paige’s favorite subject was math, and she was heavily involved with volleyball, track, chorus and a club involving medical work.

She did sports medicine to get familiarized with the work, Wade said. She was planning to start her clinicals this year.

Paige also had a great relationship with her brother, J.J.; the two would often go fishing or play basketball together.

“They were very close,” Wade said. “They did everything together growing up. He couldn’t wait for her to drive so she could be his chauffeur. That’s what he’d always say.”

Wade said she and her daughter were best friends.

“She was my rock,” Wade said. “She was very mature for her age. A lot of people would tell you that.

“Even though Paige came from a blended family — mom, dad, stepdad, stepmom — we were all very close and did a lot of things together,” she said. “For our kids, this was important.”

Inconclusive investigation

By the end of the day April 17, two of the boaters had been found dead and two more were still missing.

That day, the investigation was handed over to the ODNR Watercraft Division.

When search crews found the boat, Vernon Meinke, owner of Meinke Marina in Curtice, went out to secure it.

“The boat was partially submerged,” Meinke said in his statement. “Three feet of the bow was sticking out of the water. The engines were banging on the reef bottom.”

Yet despite the recovery of the boat and — eventually — all four bodies, questions still lingered in the families’ minds. In July, the ODNR released its report. The same word is repeated throughout.

“Type of Incident: Unknown”

“Time of Incident: Unknown”

“Contributing Factors: Unknown”

“Estimated Speed: Unknown”

“Due to the fact that everyone on board died and there were no witnesses to the accident, the circumstances surrounding the accident are unknown,” the report concluded.

All four boaters drowned, Ottawa County Coroner Dr. Daniel Cadigan said. There was no trauma to any of the bodies and alcohol was not a factor, according to the report.

Rodney Althaas, a member of the Ottawa County Sheriff’s dive team, said the water temperature at the time of his dive was 47 degrees.

“In this instance, their body temperature cooled enough for hypothermia to set in,” Cadigan said. “Even though they died from drowning.”

Cadigan said this is a major issue in many drownings, because life jackets that don’t fit properly or support the head cannot protect the wearer.

The boat motor’s black box — an event data recorder like the ones found in airplanes — was disabled at the time it capsized so the speed and motion of the boat is unknown. The boat’s GPS showed it was traveling west, then took a 90-degree turn south for 24 feet. The empty boat was recovered about three-fourths of a mile west of that last recorded position.

One thing in the report is clear: “Activity at Time of Incident: Fishing.”

The thing that brought them together, and became their last shared activity on Earth.

Jacqueline Federico of HK Mission was born three months premature and in the years since has come close to death fourth separate times. Since 2001,  when she graduated from the University of Toledo with a degree in communications, she has had 20 surgeries.

Her health issues read like a medical journal: fibromyalgia, a tumor on her pituitary gland, migraines, a learning disability, an artificial eye, ADHD. She lived at the University of Michigan Medical Center for three months when her stomach and small bowel became paralyzed in 2011; it was there she realized what it must be like for kids in the hospital.

Jacqueline Federico says her own experiences in the hospital led her to found HK Mission, to make hospital stays better for kids. Toledo Free Press photo by Kim Sanchez

“I was going crazy,” Federico, 39, recalled. “I was tired of looking at those double M’s because I’m a Buckeye fan. If it wasn’t for my husband (Frank) buying me a Kindle and my dog coming to see me, I would have gone nuts.

“I can’t imagine a poor little kid going through all that, being away from home, being away from parents; they have to go to work and leave the child in the hospital. I was like, man, they are away from school, away from their pets. I’ve got to do something.”

Katie Faulkner’s son, Timmy, was born with a rare disease. On June 2, the 8-year-old boy was admitted to Mercy St. Vincent Children’s Hospital in great pain and with a high fever. Doctors found an infection in his leg. Timmy was sad about missing his last week of school and beginning the summer sick. As he lay in his hospital bed, bored and restless, he got a nice surprise that lifted his spirits.

Federico, organizer and head of the HK Mission Toledo branch, had delivered 36 activity pouches filled with coloring books, crayons and pencils in May and the nurses had one for Timmy.

“He was so excited,” Faulkner said. “He looked through the bag right away and kept saying ‘Mom, look at this’ or ‘so cool.’ He was so excited by this bag and we had to pull everything out and play with it right then and there. There was a card game, an activity book, pencils, crayons, a bracelet, a ball and so much more.”

With Timmy’s rare disease, he has spent many hours in the hospital but has never received anything like the activity pouch, Faulkner said.

“It was really awesome as a mom because … there’s nothing I can do for him even in the hospital. This gave him something to be excited about and there’s no better feeling as a mom than to know your kids are excited,” Faulkner said.

The “HK” in HK Mission stands for “healing through kindness.” With the mission statement of “spreading the love of Jesus through one simple pouch,” the mission, founded in Pennsylvania, is dedicated to bringing activity pouches to children in hospitals around the country.

“With every activity pouch there is a get-well card made from a child or adult in the community, there’s a prayer card so that the mother can pass it along to another mother whose child is in the hospital, there’s a sheet with prayers on it so the mother can pray at the bedside of her child, and many toys and activities to brighten the sick child’s life during their stay in the hospital,” said Federico.

Dawn Rack of Pennsylvania started HK Mission about two years ago after her children Hunter and Kendall were bored and depressed while sick in the hospital. They had nothing to do until the Red Box Organization gave them activity boxes. Rack decided to take the idea to her church, which helped her establish HK Mission.

Rack and Federico are fraternity “brothers” at the co-ed Alpha Phi Omega. Rack saw Federico in her Boy Scout uniform for an Alpha Phi Omega alumni picture on Facebook and wondered why the scouts and HK Mission couldn’t do a project together.

Federico, mindful of her experience at UM Medical Center, decided to take on the challenge and do a project for HK Mission as a service project for Alpha Phi Omega. That one project has turned into her life’s purpose.

“I’ve got to have faith — that’s what I love about this mission. I believe this is what I was meant to do. I really do,” Federico said. “It’s fun, seeing the kids’ faces when they open  the pouch and say ‘Oh my gosh! Is this all for me?’ It’s neat. I’m a very optimistic person, a very spiritual person. Even when I’m in pain, I still truck along anyways.”

Federico became a representative for direct sales company Thirty-One Gifts to buy the zipper activity pouches. She enlists the community to help her pay for the pouches and to make the get-well cards and activities that fill the pouches.

“February 26 I signed up. It was hard to get people to donate … to do fundraisers. I started paying it with my own money and own allowance. I started a Facebook page, and started taking pictures of beginning to end, of everything,” Federico said. “Next thing you know, people started asking me, ‘What’s this HK Mission?’ All of a sudden people started realizing ‘Hey, what she’s doing is real. It’s legit.’ People started coming out of the woodwork to do it. But I still need help.

“This has totally changed my life,” Federico said. “With literally almost dying four times — I coded last year — some people don’t know their purpose in life. Me, I can say I made a difference in a lot of kids’ lives. If I die, I know I will die happy because of the fact I made a difference. Not a lot of people can say that. I know it’s my purpose. I love doing it.”

There are several ways to become involved in HK Mission: go online to buy or donate a pouch; hold a fundraiser to raise the money for the pouches; donate the activities that fill up the pouch; assist in assembling the pouches; help deliver the pouches to kids at hospitals; make get well cards and more.

For more information, contact Federico at (419) 304-3670.

It’s been a year of growing pains for the Collingwood Arts Center (CAC) — with a long way yet to go — but the nonprofit’s leadership believes it’s headed in the right direction.

Since taking the helm last August, Interim Executive Director Sarah Kurfis has shepherded CAC through a period of transition, most notably from an artist residency program to a more community-focused arts center.

“We’re in the process right now of figuring out what we’re going to be when we grow up,” Kurfis said. “There’s still a lot of work to do, but we’ve come pretty far. People are getting re-energized. We have a lot of new energy and artists and people helping out at the building.”

Now, she says, it’s time to pass the job to someone new. Lexi Staples will take over as executive director Oct. 1.

Staples, who has served as CAC’s special events coordinator and office manager since March, has worked closely with Kurfis to organize dozens of events at the site, including a series of ghost hunts, two food truck festivals, monthly community art days and more. She is founder and executive director of Pride of Toledo Foundation and event director for Toledo Pride. She previously owned OUTSKiRTS, a bar that closed earlier this year.

“I’m excited to continue what Sarah started,” Staples said. “It’s been cool to see just how much the community does want to be involved with the space and with the idea there could be a different use for the building. It’s been really fun to watch people start to change their minds about the building and be more supportive of futuristic plans.”

Kurfis, an attorney, will transition to a job in Washington, D.C., with the Federal Labor Relations Authority, but will remain available to Staples to answer questions and help ease the transition.

“We’re stabilizing and Lexi is the perfect person to carry out this new vision,” Kurfis said. “We found an avenue and a niche the Collingwood can be successful at and developed a strategic plan that can help it get somewhere great and have an impact on our community. I turned the ship slightly and now I’m stepping out of the way to let the most capable people do it.”

CAC also recently hired former board treasurer Colleen Eldridge as office manager.

Kurfis said she is proud of the work she did at CAC, even her controversial decision to end the building’s longtime artist residency program in January. Faced with building conditions that included no heat or hot water, residents were given 30 days to move out.

“My original recommendation was a six-month transition, but then everything basically went to hell in a week,” Kurfis said. “It was the weather that made the decision to move quicker, but it was still the right decision to make. It just wasn’t safe.”

Kurfis worked with Children’s Theater Workshop and Community Shares of Northwest Ohio, both based at CAC, before taking the interim executive director position.

“When I graduated law school, two (CAC) board members asked if I would be willing to step in and get it on a better path,” Kurfis said. “I said yes because I’ve always loved it. It has such great potential and it’s such a great building. It just needed to be pointed in the right direction. So that’s been my goal for the past year.”

Kurfis spent her first few months getting acclimated and studying the nonprofit’s structure, and concluded the resident program wasn’t working.

“It was a great idea; it just didn’t work,” Kurfis said. “I spent lots of time managing resident issues. It was basically a dorm, with everyone so close and sharing things. It was a dysfunctional mess.

“I had said I’d come in, basically with a consultant mindset, and help make decisions and figure out how we can do this,” Kurfis said. “I came to the conclusion that this isn’t working at all and I think we could make it better, but it might go under.”

The center’s financial standing is still shaky.

“We’re in a lot better position than we were even a year ago or a few months ago, but we’re still digging ourselves out of a hole caused by mismanagement,” she said.

Kurfis said some past board members bristle at the term “mismanagement,” but that’s the best way she can describe it. Staples will be CAC’s seventh executive director in five years. Several previous directors have died since stepping down. One died in the position.

“Whoever was keeping the books didn’t know what they were doing. I’m still discovering bills we owe and I’ve been here for a year. We are still digging out. It’s a mess,” Kurfis said.

“I figured out the financials I need to move forward, but I haven’t gone back and done forensics as far as finding exactly where and how it derailed, but there’s clearly signs of gross negligence.

“There’s nothing you can point to and say, ‘That was the specific problem,’” Kurfis said. “It was just a bunch of bad decisions. My guess is a combination of negligent management, unreliable contractors, probably some theft somewhere.”

CAC lost its 501(c)3 nonprofit designation for about a year and a half, although Kurfis is quick to note donations remained tax deductible since reinstatement was pending. It’s designation was restored this summer.

“We do have a complicated history,” Staples said. “It’s really frustrating to not be able to fix all the past mistakes. But we need to go forward on a clean slate.”

The beginning

Finished in 1905, the CAC is a registered historical site designed by prominent Toledo architect E.O. Fallis as a convent for the Ursuline Order of the Sacred Heart. It later housed Mary Manse College and St. Ursula Academy.

It was Pat Tansey’s idea to turn it into a community art center.

“The nuns told me in 1983 that they were going to move out of the building and they didn’t know what would happen to it. That’s when I came into the picture,” Tansey said. “In October 1984, they walked away from the building and gave me the keys and I walked in. In the early years I was pretty much alone trying to make things work here.”

With the end of the artist residency program, CAC lost its main source of funding, which now comes from studio rentals, event space rentals and proceeds from events, Kurfis said. All current funds are tied into basic operating costs, but the hope is to eventually shift to capital improvements.

Future needs will include a new roof, electrical upgrades, plumbing upgrades and more, Kurfis said.

“We’ve been chasing crises and plugging little holes and can’t get ahead of the big stuff yet,” she said. “Cleaning up after the residents has taken us a lot longer than we originally anticipated. It was one of those things where the culture had probably eroded over time and the building was not being treated respectfully. We’re still throwing out garbage every week that’s accumulated over years.”

A boiler donated by the local chapter of the National Electrical Contractors should help prevent heating situations like the one that led to the end of the residency program, Tansey said.

“We have a working bicycle, but we have training wheels and we’d like to take them off at some point,” Staples said.

New mission

CAC’s new mission statement is “to provide an outlet for creative community involvement while preserving a historic space.” Its new tagline is Creating Community Through Art.

Over the past few months, Kurfis, Staples and a host of volunteers have added fresh coats of paint and started landscaping projects. About 20 artists and organizations rent studio space in the building. Meeting rooms and event rentals are also available.

“The community didn’t know this building was worth saving because they hadn’t seen it and we weren’t doing anything to give back. There was no reason for outside people to support us,” Kurfis said. “I’m really excited about the progress.”

Restoration

Pam Pullella of Sylvania Township and her husband John volunteer regularly at CAC.

“It’s a beautiful building, but it hasn’t gotten the love and attention it needed over the years,” Pullella  said. “I would love to see it brought back to its original grandeur, to let it shine how it did, to become a magnet for the arts. It’s really great how [Kurfis and Staples] are trying to make it a community space and get people more involved.”

Many groups that rent studio space at CAC are also happy with the new direction.

Barry Aslinger started the T-Town Tassels burlesque troupe at CAC earlier this year. He and his partner are the only former residents still living at CAC. Aslinger stayed on doing maintenance work at the building, which he calls a “jewel” of Toledo.

“More has been done now since Lexi and Sarah have been in place than I’ve seen since I moved in,” Aslinger said. “It’s brighter, it’s cleaner, the energy that flows through the building is more welcoming. The whole vibe has changed and a lot of people are supporting the fact that it’s moving forward so progressively.”

The changes have been good for business, said Erin Garber-Pearson, who founded Bird’s Eye View Circus Space at CAC in 2011.

“The building is on the mend,” Garber-Pearson said. “The visual upkeep of the space has definitely changed and that’s really huge for me running a professional business there.

“It was a hard situation (with the former residents). It’s someone’s home but it’s also my business and my business has needs different from the needs of a living space. For me, I like having it as more of a professional organization now.

“If folks want to see the building prosper, grow and continue to evolve and be the center the community needs, it’s a good time to take some of the personal needs out of that and look at the larger picture, which I think Lexi and Sarah have both done.

“They are both really invested in the community and have the drive needed to make connections with other parts of the community, not just artists. We are really broadening the scope into a community center that’s related to the arts, but also services the community in ways not currently offered.”

Performing arts, in particular, have “really blossomed” at CAC, she said

“There have been more shows here in the last six months than in the past three years I’ve been here combined,” Garber-Pearson said. “It’s just been incredibly busy here, which is really exciting.”

Upcoming events

Upcoming events at CAC include:

• Hardcore Crafters, 7:30-10 p.m. Oct. 2, featuring craft beer and two crafts: a pendant out of poker chips and a concrete coaster. Cost is $19 per person or $30 for two people.
• Ghost hunting lecture, 8 p.m. Oct. 3, presented by local paranormal investigator Chris Bores, featuring tips for novice ghost hunters and a 15-minute audio recording of a conversation with a ghost. Cost is $5 and attendees will get a coupon for $5 off one of  CAC’s October ghost hunts. An optional ghost hunt will take place after the lecture from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Cost is $35.
• Ghost hunts led by Bores, 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. Oct. 4, 11, 12, 17, 18, 24 and 25. Following an hour-long tour of CAC, attendees are released to explore. Cost is $35. If available, tickets at the door are $45. Event is open to ages 18 and older.
• 6-9 p.m. Oct 22: Spooky Family Fun Night, featuring art projects and trick or treating inside CAC.
• Oct. 31: T-Town Tassels burlesque show.
• 6-10 p.m. Nov. 6: The Art of Craft, featuring craft beers from four breweries and two musical acts. Cost is $30 per person or $50 for two people.
• November: Bird’s Eye View Circus Space performance.
• February: Bird’s Eye View retelling of the Russian fairy tale “Baba Yaga” using circus acts.

“I’m just really excited about the Collingwood’s future,” Kurfis said. “It’s still going to be hard for a while, but I think it’s going to be awesome.”

For more information, visit the website collingwoodartscenter.org.