concert hall, art gallery and restaurant now planned for former site of Lollipop Tree

The minds behind 3S Artspace have shifted their attention to a new location closer to downtown Portsmouth. They’ve signed a five-year lease agreement and purchase option for the building at 319 Vaughan St., former site of the Lollipop Tree.

Co-founders Chris Greiner and John Gayle previously hoped to open their multipurpose venue, which will include a mid-sized performance hall, a non-commercial art gallery and a farm-to-table restaurant, at the “Fermentation Building,” which was built in 1884 as part of the Frank Jones Brewery off Islington Street.

Greiner said the new location by North Mill Pond offers a number of advantages over the previous site. For one thing, it’s in an area surrounded by pending development (including the Portwalk project and a proposed parking garage), essentially placing it on the outskirts of the growing downtown. For another, while the Fermentation Building has been vacant since it was gutted by a fire in 1990, the new building is in better condition and already has functional services.

Also, the property on Vaughan Street offers 18,000 square feet of space across two floors—nearly twice as much as was available at the Fermentation Building. According to Greiner, “The layout is simply better.”

“Having now twice the space gives us a lot of interesting possibilities for revenue generation in the shorter term, and also potentially the expansion of 3S’s programming in the longer term, which is also really exciting,” he said. “There’s still a lot of thought and planning that needs to go into what we eventually wind up doing with the full 18,000 square feet, but there’s much greater possibilities.”

The building on Vaughan Street has been vacant since the Lollipop Tree closed in April. Greiner said he’s established a positive relationship with building owner David Parent, who, he said, supports the 3S vision and the local arts scene.

The new site does not dramatically change plans for the venue’s layout, which will be on the ground level and leave the second floor open, Greiner said. The building will still require substantial renovations, but its other advantages convinced the 3S board of directors to alter their intentions.

“It wasn’t that the other location fell through, at all. We simply had a better opportunity come our way, so the board made a decision to pursue this other opportunity,” Greiner said. “It was a deliberate shift in focus from the other site to this site and not a falling apart of the other site.”

The new location also gives 3S the potential to open a bit earlier than its previously planned fall 2012 opening at the Fermentation Building, but Greiner doesn’t want to get ahead of himself. He said the 3S team will be focused on fundraising and other preparations over the winter. Fundraising efforts to date have been successful, he said, but they still have a long way to go.

“We’re still in the very early stages, but so far it’s been successful in that it’s keeping us operational, it’s allowing us to do events, and it afforded us the ability to get into this space,” he said. “We’re poised to now take it to the next level.”

Events will continue in 3S’s Open Space series, which presents art projects at various locations around the Seacoast. Past projects included the “21 Rooms” art exhibit at The Nevada Motel in York in September, and the “Before I Die” public chalkboard at Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth in September and October. Winter events will be sparser, Greiner said, but a few ideas are in the works.