AUBURN — There’s no elevator and the heat in the Great Falls Art Center is weird. The hallways and stairways are dark at night and only some of the drinking fountains work.

But at the same time, there is a nice energy in the building, something graphic artist Kip Elliott appreciates.

“I like my office,” Elliott said. “I think this is a very good building. I just hope we can get something worked out and do something positive for it, not just have a knee-jerk reaction.”

Elliott is one of the 12 tenants in the former Great Falls School on Academy Street, midway between downtown and New Auburn.

He shares the building with a yoga center, a fitness instructor, two dance studios and dance gear retail operation, a pottery study and classroom and studio space for several other artists — not to mention Auburn’s own Community Little Theatre group.

“As a tenant, the location is great,” said Elizabeth Hansen of the Dance Center. “I don’t think we could exist the way we do now if we had to move someplace else. On the other hand, as an Auburn taxpayer, I understand the city’s concerns.”

Faced with annual operational deficits at the building, city councilors are scheduled to discuss the building’s fate at a 5:30 p.m. workshop meeting Monday.

Despite an effort to rent more space in the building, it continues to lose money — about $29,000 during the 2009-10 fiscal year. It amounts to a running loss of $240,000 over four years, according to City Manager Glenn Aho.

“The fact is, there is a tremendous amount of social capital in that building,” Aho said Friday. “It provides a lot of good for the community. But the question comes down to paying for it. Is this something the public should be paying for?”

It’s a question the city has grappled with almost every year since it was closed as a school and began being used as a downtown arts center in the mid-1990s. A 2009 study estimated it would cost between $7.5 and $11 million to renovate the building and up to $15 million to tear it down and replace it with something new.

As it stands today, the city expects to spend $63,247 on the building, almost half of that for heating fuel. Despite the building’s shortcomings, $1,171 was budgeted for repairs, according to the city’s year-end financial reports.

The building brought in $34,577 in the 2009-10 fiscal year, most of it rent from tenants.

Community Business Specialist Tracey Steuber said the city raised rents last year to $4.60 per square foot. Most tenants pay that rate currently, although some older tenants pay much less. The Share Center, which operates a dry goods clearing house out of the building’s basement, pays $1.45 per square foot.

But Share Center Co-Coordinator Suzette Moulton said the operation also donated $77,000 worth of office equipment, binders, notepaper, decorations, costumes and other supplies to the city and schools last year.

The biggest tenant, the Community Little Theatre, pays $8,500 per year in rent for auditorium space as well as storage for costumes, scenery and a green room.

But Steuber said the city has seven vacant rooms for rent right now. The share center is reducing its basement space, from 4,463 square feet to 1,452. The theater and the Edward Little Theater group are scheduled to move their costume storage into the space the share center is vacating, opening up four more rooms on the top floor.

“Those upper floors tend to be the most rentable,” Steuber said. “We can get more rent and we’re more likely to find tenants for that space.”

The city doesn’t advertise for tenants. Most new tenants learn of the building through word-of-mouth, or see Steuber’s office phone number posted at places around the building.

Elliot, like many of the other tenants, thinks renting more space could bring in enough revenue to make the building solvent.

But Aho doubts that.

“The building just cannot operate the way it has,” Aho said. “We need to either invest significant amounts of money in it or we need to sell it. But legally, we cannot leave that building the way it is.”

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