Blume Studios: Transforming a Historic Site into a Destination for the Future

With the grand opening of Blume Studios, a new home for immersive entertainment, Blumenthal Arts is helping to usher in a new era for Charlotte and the region. But it’s also building on the legacy of a site with more than a century of tradition serving the community and the nation.

 

For more than 120 years, Charlotte Pipe and Foundry has been a leader in the construction industry, operating out of the same location. The company is one of the largest producers of cast iron and plastic pipe and fittings across the country.

 

(Blume Studios, located at the former home to Charlotte Pipe and Foundry)

 

It’s a fifth generation, family-owned business with deep ties to the Charlotte community.

 

In 2023, the company relocated its cast iron foundry and the bulk of its manufacturing to a new location in Oakboro, North Carolina — about 30 miles outside of Charlotte — which provided an opportunity for owners, the Dowd family, to redevelop the land.

 

Blume Studios is the first tenant on the 55-acre site, newly rebranded as The Iron District. Plans are underway for the area to become a dynamic, pedestrian-focused destination for people to live, work and play. In the future, it will include a mix of apartments, retail and restaurants.

 

(Inside the former Charlotte Pipe and Foundry location before Blume Studios installation and transformation)

 

The hands-on, local and collaborative approach of the development is unusual, said Tom Gabbard, Blumenthal Arts president and CEO. It’s not merely geared as a financial investment for the family but represents a commitment to creating something that will also benefit future generations of Charlotteans.

 

“That's something that you just don’t find with a lot of real estate development — wanting to do right by the community,” Gabbard said.

 

Having the chance to get in on the ground floor of the project and help shape what it will become is also unusual. Many times, he said, the arts are added at the end as “window dressing” in new developments.

 

(Blumenthal Arts President and CEO Tom Gabbard speaking at the Blume Studios Announcement press event in April 2024)

 

“We have an opportunity to make the arts and the vibrancy of the arts an integral part

of how this whole development plays out,” he said. “And we're hopeful to see that the arts are really part of a heartbeat… of this project for many years to come.”

 

Transforming the space while honoring its past

 

Following the announcement of the new location last spring came a whirlwind of activity. Blumenthal needed to transform Charlotte Pipe & Foundry’s former warehouse into an immersive playground that could accommodate crowds rather than a few warehouse workers.

 

But even before renovations began, the site already had a lot going for it.

 

With 32,000 square feet of usable interior space, high ceilings and few structural columns to obstruct sightlines or restrict design plans, it provides ample room for a wide variety of immersive experiences in the future.

 

Its location, on the borders of South End and Uptown, is also ideal.

 

“The kind of things that we aim to do are going to attract people from all over the region, not just Mecklenburg County,” Gabbard said. “So the centrality of that and the ease of access off the interstate is important.”

 

Readying the building for the public, however, required an industrial deep cleaning of every surface and lots of infrastructure improvements. That includes significantly upgraded power and plumbing, a new HVAC system, adding more bathrooms and upgrading existing ones, as well as ensuring all aspects of the building meet or exceed ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) requirements.

 

Outside, there are now more lights stretching from the parking lot to the building, a new wheelchair accessible entrance, new sidewalks and grass. There are also temporary bathrooms out front until the new indoor bathrooms, made from stackable shipping containers, are fully installed.

 

As construction and infrastructure upgrades zoomed along throughout the summer, Blume Studios was also readying for its first production, “Space Explorers: THE INFINITE,” an immersive experience featuring breathtaking 360° cinematic video footage from the International Space Station. The show, which opened in September is enjoying massive success in Charlotte and even extended its run through January 5, 2025. (You can find more info and purchase tickets here.)

 

 

Getting everything designed, permitted, installed and inspected in three months required more than one hundred workers, from construction contractors to members of the local stagehands union to dozens of Charlotte based visual artists.

 

At the helm has been Brian Sekinger, Blume Studios’ Immersive Venue Operations Manager, overseeing the various crews coming in and out of the building 12-hours a day and serving as project manager.

 

“We’ve sort of been joking that we’re building the spaceship as we’re flying it,” Sekinger told Blumenthal’s Blog a week before Blume Studios officially opened.

 

But as the building has morphed into something new, it also intentionally incorporates tributes to Charlotte Pipe and Foundry’s long history.

 

(Brian Sekinger, Blume Studios’ Immersive Venue Operations Manager)

 

“We want to honor that history and not just come in and erase everything that’s happened here,” Sekinger said. “This is a room, a building, where hard work happened. And we want to embrace that and not try to hide it.”

 

Often in the theater world, there’s an effort to mask things with black curtains and black paint, he said. But that didn’t happen here.

 

For example, Blume Studios’ new café/bar, the Stargazer Lounge, and its box office are built out of blue and orange scaffolding, just like the pallet racking structure in use when the site still functioned as a warehouse.

 

(The Stargazer Lounge on Stage 1 at Blume Studios)

 

Electrical conduits, raw steel, beams and more are still visible. Special care has been taken to ensure visitor safety around these features, Sekinger said, and cool lighting added to highlight them.

 

Continuing a Tradition of Craftsmanship

 

Blume Studios also carries on the tradition established during Blumenthal’s record-breaking run of Immersive Van Gogh of incorporating local and internationally-based artists into the experience. These features are all free and available to anyone with or without a ticket.

 

 

A giant 80-foot long mural of the cosmos by local painter and digital artist Cheeks McGee lines one wall. Other space themed creations like “The Upcycled Moon Man,” by Concord-based artist TuxedoKat, and “Dew Drops,” by local multimedia artist Meredith Connelly, enrich the experience for visitors. Snippets of original poetry created by local writers, as part of the city-wide poetry project “Of Earth and Sky,” pop up around the venue, inviting guests into a moment of contemplation.

 

Meanwhile, an absorbing soundscape created by local Emmy Award-winning composer Jason Hausman, encourages visitors to linger near “Gaia,” the large, suspended and spinning replica of planet Earth, created by UK artist Luke Jerram (also the conceptual mind behind “Of Earth and Sky”). Nearby, guests of all ages delight in interacting with the large kinetic sculpture, “Groundswell,” by Australian artist Matthias Schack-Arnott, that responds with mesmerizing sound and movement as people walk, dance or shift their weight upon it.

 

 

In the gift shop, 30% of the available merchandise is also designed and created by local artists.

 

An exhibition of artifacts from the personal collection of Charlottean and former astronaut Joan Higginbotham, the third African-American woman to launch into space, is also featured as a complementary feature to “THE INFINITE.”

 

 

“We are the first organization that has really paired ‘INFINITE’ with other art,” Sekinger said.

 

He believes Blume Studios' success in doing so demonstrates “how you can expand beyond just the four walls of the exhibit.”

 

The hope is that some partners who will present the show later could rent or borrow artwork, such as “Gaia” and pieces by local artists. The benefits are multifold — since it creates additional components to the experience and also provides more exposure and potential income opportunities for local artists.

 

“If we can send [art] to another city and it goes up and more people get to see it and experience it, it’s better for everyone,” Sekinger said.

 

Flexibility, Experimentation and an Eye Toward the Future

 

The incredible thing is that “THE INFINITE” is just the beginning.

 

This fall, Blume Studios already rolled out a second offering, a dinner theater experience, called “Faulty Towers: The Dining Experience” next door at Stage 2, and plans are underway for future immersive experiences to engage and inspire guests.

 

(Faulty Towers: The Dining Experience delighted audiences on Stage 2 at Blume Studios from Sept. 26 - Oct. 13, 2024)

 

To accommodate the vast variety of immersive possibilities, the warehouse space has been designed with flexibility in mind. Leaders say to expect the set up to be completely different for the next show or operations to even shift to another location on the property, as The Iron District development takes off.

 

“We approach this work with a very flexible, nimble mindset,” Gabbard said. “... If they need [us] to move to a different part of the property or do something different … that's imminently discussable and is a part of our operating model.”

 

There’s also a focus on experimentation with the new space. In addition to welcoming touring shows, Gabbard envisions Blume Studios as a hub for innovation and the development of experimental projects. That’s something that has caught the eye of others in the field at a national and even international level.

 

There simply aren’t large spaces like this available for creative experimentation, said Kevin Cunningham, New York-based interdisciplinary artist, curator and producer. He’s the Founding Director of 3LD, a company whose award-winning services include the development of large-scale, multi-media performances, immersive art and feature length films.

 

(Kevin Cunningham)

 

He said Blume Studios “has the potential to be a model for other cities that aren't LA and New York… to actually contribute to a really important new development in creative expression.”

 

Beyond establishing new venues, Cunningham said, the concept Gabbard has articulated for Charlotte provides “something really needed and something that doesn't exist anywhere else, as far as I know, which is a development site for new immersive work.”

 

For Gabbard, it’s all part of his vision for Blumenthal Arts as a forward-looking organization. He said overwhelming data indicates the public appetite for participatory arts and experiences continues to grow.

 

“We're really at the leading edge of a style of active engagement in the arts that, I think, definitely positions [us] well for many years to come.”