Only two years ago, the Hoffman Center for the Arts didn’t have even one paid employee. The Manzanita arts center remedied that in late 2022 with the hiring of its first paid executive director. Now, as the nonprofit prepares to celebrate its 20^th anniversary on Saturday, board members are plotting the next steps in ensuring the center’s continuing role as a cultural hub for the arts.

“All signs are pointed toward expansion,” said Executive Director India Downes-Le Guin. She added, “We are laying the groundwork to expand as thoughtfully and sustainably as possible. We have land and a strategic plan, and we feel we can get there if we stay united and focused.”

The center was made possible by the gift of property and assets bequeathed by Myrtle and Lloyd Hoffman, Manzanita residents – a pianist and painter, respectively – who died in 2004. The first unofficial board met in May of that year, with nonprofit status achieved the following September. In the 20 years since, it has become known not only as the cultural heart of Manzanita, but also as an arts center for much of the North Coast.

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“I think you have to define it as being more than Manzanita,” said board president  Janice Slonecker Berman. “It’s a small but mighty organization that can make an impact to a small part of the Oregon Coast, not just Manzanita. We’ve just done our first real three-year strategic plan to get us through ’26, and I feel like we have big goals to grow the Hoffman and grow programming. There is so much it could be.”

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For much of its life, Hoffman’s focus has been on five core programs: gallery, horticulture, visual arts, clay studio, and writing. In any given month, visitors might attend an exhibit opening; learn ceramics, drawing, writing, or photography; sit in on a reading; or create a garden mosaic.

Since 2008, the Writers’ Series has been an integral part of the Hoffman, drawing crowds to hear readings by such bestselling authors as Jess Walter, Karen Karbo, and Phillip Margolin. The series continues, spotlighting writers with local connections. Its literary journal, the North Coast Squid, continues to thrive and grow.

“The North Coast Squid really was a big hit,” said Vera Wildauer, co-founder with Kathie Hightower of the Writers’ Series. “We would have these release parties … and from the stage all the way to the front door, there were probably 70 chairs set up and standing room only all the way to the back. It was just insane. All the people who were just happy to have something published would bring all their friends and neighbors. That was so gratifying, to see the impact our little literary journal had on people’s lives.”

Over the years, the center’s focus has changed with the times, but its direction in coming years may be grounded in its beginnings.  

“We tried many different things, many different iterations of what the center offers,” said Downes-Le Guin. (And yes, she’s related to author Ursula K. Le Guin, who was her grandmother.) “Flexibility, prioritizing, and listening to the community have gotten us to where we are. But in many ways, we are now returning to the original plans, emphasizing youth and adult programming and also the improvement of the library, both of which are stated in our founding charter.”

In the center’s early years, board members discussed merging with the city’s library, owned by the North Tillamook Library Friends, but the library vetoed the idea. Talk of the two entities working more closely together has resumed. “We have liaisons on all the board meetings,” Downes-Le Guin said. “There is a shared goal to restart mutual programming, and I think consider each other in any expansion plans.”  

Among the goals in the strategic plan for 2024-26 is building “organizational capacity and infrastructure to achieve ‘readiness’” for a future capital campaign to fund an expansion.

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From the beginning, the center has been something of a work in progress. It was originally dubbed the Hoffman Center (the name change came in 2015) and located in the Hoffmans’ former home. In 2006, the center moved across Laneda Avenue into a building originally built as storage units. The oddball structure, formerly the Treasure Cave and for a time known as the Hoffman Center Annex, was hardly ideal for gatherings. Sightlines were obscured, the heating system deficient, and the Hoffmans’ house – no longer in use – deemed unsafe.

In the beginning, the board made use of the Treasure Cave building as it was – including a main room with two posts the audience had to peer around to see what was happening on stage. Two years after the center moved into the building, an outside group held a meeting there.

“The next day, one of the guys in the group came out to my house and handed me a check for $5,000 and said this is to get rid of those posts,” recalled David Dillon, founding member. “We already had rough ideas for what to do. The money just fell right out of the sky.”

Two years later, Dillon attended a Writers’ Series reading and, seeing the audience bundled up and shivering, asked, “Isn’t it cold?” So began the campaign to raise funds for a new heater. One month later, they had the money in hand.

It’s doubtful anyone foresaw what would come of razing Myrtle and Lloyd Hoffman’s house. In 2014, the Hoffman Center hosted a public meeting to discuss community matters. Among those matters was the need to get rid of the derelict Hoffman house, a project that would cost $15,000. The next day, a local family delivered a check for $15,000 – with one condition: that the house come down before the town’s beloved Fourth of July parade. Demolition happened June 2.     

“It was a big public event,” Dillon said. “I’m focused on bringing it down, having everything happen, and having it all done in time. I never gave a thought to the next day – what to do with the property.” But others had, and they decided the now vacant lot should become a garden.

“A couple weeks later, there’s two dozen volunteers and garden enthusiasts swarming all over the place, and they already had lined up the excavation guy to bring in dirt to build a public garden,” Dillon recalled.

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The space, since dubbed the Wonder Garden, has become an iconic feature on Laneda Avenue. It will not, Downes-Le Guin emphasized, be displaced by the coming expansion. “It’s not going anywhere,” she said. Plans call for the new building on the property next to the garden, with the current building possibly also expanding.

For the past six years, the garden has thrived under the green thumb of Ketzel Levine, formerly NPR’s “Doyenne of Dirt.”

Levine was approached to take over the garden shortly after moving to Manzanita. Until then, she hadn’t been aware of the center and didn’t know a soul in town – which, by the way, has a population of about 630.

“The invitation to belong meant a lot to me,” Levine said. “It was a place for me to bring my talent and my energy and meet the community. It’s been an astonishing experience to grow the garden … to make it a community gathering place as well as a place of horticultural beauty, and to have a phenomenal volunteer staff … and most of all to work with the staff and other program leads at the Hoffman. It’s been transformative for me.”

The garden will, of course, be part of Saturday’sanniversary celebration, featuring a horticultural-themed bingo game. The event, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., will include fun ranging from magnet poetry to life drawing to historical presentations. Officiant and poet Adria Badagnani will read a “love letter” to the Hoffman based on responses gathered in a questionnaire mailed to residents. One of the questions asked people to name a theme song for the center (if it had one). Responses ranged from Somewhere Over the Rainbow to Dolly Parton’s You Can Do It, to the ‘70’s disco hit, Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now.

Responses as a whole were moving, detailed, and thoughtful, Badagnani said.

“I’m mining from very rich material,” she said. “One of the recurring themes I read in a lot of the responses has to do with people recognizing how much care there is in the community. There is this sense of awe and amazement that we’ve be able to pull it off, that this collaboration continues to be a source of inspiration.”

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