NORTH ADAMS — It used to be a bank, and now, thousands of lights hang on strings from the ceiling at 90 Main St.
On Friday at dusk, the 2,400 globes will be lit up for the first time in an installation art piece visible through the building’s floor-to-ceiling windows.
TD Bank closed in the space last year. Then in December the property sold for $600,000 to Ginko on Main Street LLC, but it wasn’t clear what the space might become.
John Wadsworth Jr., owner of Porches Inn, is listed as the Ginko on Main Street’s manager in state filings. Karla Rothstein and Sal Perry, architects and developers at Greylock Works, are working with Ginko on Main to plan the future of 90 Main St., Rothstein said.
The new installation art is meant to be seen from the outside of the building through the windows, she said. “We hope people will encounter it, be curious, and be open to what it inspires them to think and feel,” she said.
LATENT Productions, Rothstein and Perry’s firm, came up with the installation’s idea, and the lights are programmed to go with a sound design. The new installation will continue glowing through the fall and winter.
What the inside 90 Main St. will become in the long term is not yet decided, according to Rothstein. “’Exponential’ is a neighborly placeholder while that work unfolds,” she said.
But Rothstein said the group hopes it will be part of downtown revitalization, a sentiment reflected in the new installation’s title, Exponential.
“In math, exponential is a function of positive change, becoming more and more rapid” Rothstein said. “Our intention is that 90 Main will contribute to the momentum already underway in downtown North Adams, synergistic with the creative and entrepreneurial businesses, both fledgling and long established.”
The full property is 20,000 square feet and the building takes up about a quarter of that, 5,500 square feet. The developers have schematic designs for an “urban oasis” in what is now asphalt between the building and a church behind it, Rothstein said.
“It is envisioned to include a ramp to the rooftop where you’re immersed in steeples and mountains,” Rothstein said. “This installation is an interim activation of the sidewalk, while we work with our landscape architects to develop the site and planting plan, and evaluate options for suitable programming.”