Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center To Merge With Colorado College

Colorado College announced Thursday that it will acquire the nearby Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. The private school will commit more than $20 million to the merger.

The college will take over the center's facility and its permanent art collection. The non-profit organization houses a museum and a theater.

Erin Hannan, executive director of advancement, said the move will bring more financial stability to the center.

Only about half of the Fine Arts Center's $5 million annual budget comes from earned revenue such as ticket sales. The center also sits on a $13 million endowment, which its own foundation will continue to manage.

"Unlike a lot of other arts institutions across the country, we don’t receive public funding," Hannan said. "So there’s a fairly good size of our budget every year that we have to fundraise from the community in order to present our programming, and that has made us a bit vulnerable."

The two sides expect to finalize the deal in 2020.