The official sale of the Miners Foundry Cultural Center (Foundry) to the City of Nevada City was approved by the Nevada City Council during a regular meeting on Wednesday evening at City Hall.
The total purchase price for the property located at 325 Spring Street was $1.
“I want to acknowledge that we very sincerely honor the efforts, the valiant efforts of the trust and the nonprofit to keep the Foundry going through very difficult times,” Councilmember Lou Ceci said. “We also take very sincerely and seriously the wish of the people that the Foundry not only survive, but flourish.”
The city and the community have the “nuts and bolts” of how to transition the ownership, according to Ceci.
“We’ve captured, I think, the heart and soul of what the city wants for this building, and we are eager to see that through.”
In February of this year, the city council approved a lease agreement between the city and the Foundry that was short-lived.
Mayor Gary Petersen and Councilmember Lou Ceci established the Foundry and Cultural Center City Committee.
The lease was really a temporary mechanism to allow the city and the Foundry to work together, to allow the Foundry to continue to exist while the city worked through the process of acquiring both the assets and its liabilities, and ultimately to dissolve the trust and the nonprofit, according to Sean Grayson, City Manager.
For a myriad of reasons, the Foundry just wasn’t able to continue under its current configuration.
“We really appreciate everything that they did to get this far so that the city could help and make sure that there will continue to be a Foundry there,” Grayson said.
The city will take all the liabilities of the nonprofit and the trust and merge them into an operations plan that ensures profitability of the facility, according to Grayson.
“The way things were going wasn’t going to end well for the Foundry, and now they will never end,” Councilmember Doug Fleming said. “We almost had another zombie building on our hands ... In a record amount of time — I’m sure there’s some records broken here — (staff) got these agreements done. They did all the due diligence necessary to get done, and still ran the city.”
The council approved a separate fund for the Miners Foundry to be used in the transition period that will be paid back to the city for its investment.
“We’re committed to maintaining the building, improving its overall condition, pursuing the outdoor dining and cafe that the Foundry Board had a vision for, and adding air conditioning to the building,” Grayson said.
Weddings previously scheduled will still happen, and bands will still be on stage as planned, along with community events on a regular basis.
In the next couple of weeks, the city will take on the employment of all of the current employees at the Foundry, and they will become city employees.
A condition of that purchase and sale agreement was that the County of Nevada waive its interest as a listed beneficiary of the Foundry. That action was approved by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, March 26, 2025.
The community turned out and provided input on best uses for the community programming earlier in March, and this feedback will offer guidance to the council in the upcoming months.
“I’m really grateful to the community who continues to show up about this, and we had a great event a couple weeks ago,” Councilmember Daniela Fernández said. “One hundred-plus people showed up to let us know that they care about the Foundry, and they care about the future. They are invested in this place, not just in its past, but in its future.”