Plans are coming together for a multi-use art center in Portsmouth that would restore a historic building and expand the city’s creative community.

Hints into the Fermentation Building’s history can be found throughout the 126-year-old brick structure in Portsmouth, both inside and out. Chiseled into the side of the building is the date 1884—the year it was constructed as part of the massive Frank Jones Brewery, which operated along Islington Street until 1950. An investigation of the gutted interior yields some old, faded hot dog labels, a reflection of the building’s years as the Shultz factory, which shut down after a fire in 1990. Scattered in the corners are piles of pigeon waste (as well as a few dozen bird carcasses), evidence of the last two decades of neglect.

The Fermentation Building has stood vacant since the Schultz fire 20 years ago, a hollow, rundown shell of a once significant structure in the city. But plans are materializing for a return to prominence.

The building, now owned by King Weinstein, is proposed to become the future home of 3S Artspace, a multipurpose venue that will include a 300-capacity performance space, an 1,800-square-foot art gallery, and an all-day restaurant.

The partners behind the non-profit enterprise are Kittery residents Chris Greiner and John Gayle. Where most people see a derelict edifice occupied solely by pigeons, Greiner and Gayle see a tremendous opportunity. After touring the Fermentation Building, they knew it was an ideal spot to manifest their vision for an interactive art center.

“Once we got in there and looked at it and saw what an incredible raw space it is and how much potential it has, we knew that it was the perfect fit for us,” Greiner said. “We would be going in there and creating something around which a neighborhood could develop.”

Greiner and Gayle, along with their nascent board of directors, are in the process of launching a feasibility and planning study to gauge support for their project within the community. Their plan is to occupy the entire 10,000-square-foot ground level of the Fermentation Building. They have not yet signed a lease, but they have issued a letter of intent and reached an agreement with Weinstein, a principal of King Real Estate.

Use of the upper floors of the building remains to be seen. There are three main levels, plus a five-story tower facing Brewery Lane. Greiner would like to see every inch of the building used for art-related purposes, and Weinstein, who also owns several surrounding properties, seems amicable to the idea.

“For this whole area, it’s a great idea to bring all the buildings closer together and have sort of a combined usage,” Weinstein said. “There are a lot of possibilities, and there’s a really great amount of artistic talent in the Portsmouth Seacoast area.”

The upper floors could become live-work space or studios for artists, musicians, graphic designers or high-tech companies, Weinstein said. If the space is devoted to artistic uses, it would further establish the Islington Street corridor as an arts district. Within a few hundred yards of the Fermentation Building are the Button Factory artist studios, the Portsmouth Music and Arts Center, and West End Studio Theatre (home to both Pontine Theatre and the New Hampshire Theatre Project), and Portsmouth Community Radio.

“Having a hub in that Islington Street corridor—where there’s gallery space, performance space, gathering space—really creates a second smaller center of gravity and has the potential to expand downtown in that direction,” Greiner said.

The name 3S can be viewed as standing for “three spaces.” At one end of the building would be a midsize performance space for music, theater, films and lectures. With the ability to transition between standing room, cafe seating and tiered theater seating, the venue will fill a size gap on the Seacoast. There are numerous bars and clubs in the area that host live music, as well as a few larger facilities like The Music Hall, Blue Ocean Music Hall, and the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom. But, at the moment, there’s little in between.

Greiner, who moved to the Seacoast a decade ago, has long been aware of the community’s need for a midsize performance venue. He worked at The Music Hall for close to 10 years, ultimately serving as box office manager. He’s also a local musician who has performed and produced shows in the area. He helped launch The Wire’s inaugural RPM Challenge in 2006 and serves on the board of Art-Speak, Portsmouth’s cultural commission.

“Just by the nature of all the things I’ve been involved in, I’ve been able to keep my finger on the pulse of the local scene,” Greiner said. “Specifically, a 300-capacity flexible venue does not exist anywhere on the Seacoast.”

The plan for the music portion of 3S, he said, is to bring in national touring acts, as well as local and regional bands, and commingle the two whenever possible.

“Every time a national touring act comes through 3S, we want to have a local or regional act on that bill,” Greiner said.

The concept for the art gallery is similar. Located in the opposite end of the building from the performance room, the gallery would serve as a noncommercial space for rotating exhibits and installations by local and international artists.

“What the space that we’re envisioning at 3S will offer is a lot more space for artists in the community to experiment with and display different types of work, and also allow us to bring in work from all over, internationally,” said Gayle.

While Greiner has the expertise and connections to run the music venue, Gayle has the experience to oversee the art space. A musician and visual artist, he attended the University of New Hampshire as an undergrad and earned his MFA from the Maine College of Art in Portland.

The 3S board of directors includes Deb Thompson, owner of the Nahcotta art gallery in downtown Portsmouth. Since 3S will not rely on sales, she said, they can be more experimental with their exhibits.

“As a gallery owner, I think anything that brings the arts to the area is a good thing,” Thompson said. “The way 3S is set up is going to be such an amazing space for more nontraditional, less commercial art installations, and I think that’s something, as a commercial gallery, we can’t really offer (at Nahcotta). It brings such an interesting and important dimension to the cultural community.”

Gayle moved to the Seacoast from Florida shortly after The Elvis Room closed its doors in 1999, leaving dozens of area musicians and hundreds of concert-goers to mourn the loss of a beloved Portsmouth venue. Folks who have been on the scene long enough to still whine about The Elvis Room’s absence, but Gayle and Greiner hope to put some of those complaints to rest. The performance space and art gallery will largely be dedicated to supporting up-and-coming talent in the region.

“We’re going to focus strongly on emerging arts and artists, and we’re going to try to get as wild and creative in that space as possible,” Greiner said. “We love the idea of site-specific installation work, and we love the idea of collaborative work between artists, and we love the idea of interaction between all of the spaces, too.”

They also love the idea of providing a location where creative minds can connect and interact. They envision a facility that’s bigger than the sum of its parts, not just a gallery or a concert hall or a cafe, but a central gathering place for the community.

“We want to be a place where people can network and exchange ideas,” Greiner said. “I’m a big believer that when you put smart, creative people in proximity to one another, great things happen.”

That’s partly where the restaurant comes into play. The preliminary floor plan calls for cafe seating, bar seating and outdoor patio seating, offering affordable meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus coffee, beer and wine.

“The idea of being open all day fits in with that core mission of being a community center, of being a place where people can go as a destination,” Gayle said.

The menu has not been finalized, and the founders are still searching for someone to manage the restaurant, but their intention is to offer quality, affordable food, using locally-produced ingredients as often as possible.

“To the extent that we’re able to, we really want to do farm-to-table and be as locally sourced as we possibly can,” Greiner said.

Gayle and Greiner have drawn inspiration from a number of existing businesses in New England, including AS20 in Providence, R.I., which similarly offers art, music and food. One of the ideas they borrowed from AS20 is the concept of “food as programming,” bringing the same set of values to items on the menu as they do to the acts on the stage and art on the walls.

“It’s like we’re bringing in a local performer, but that performer just happens to make really good goat cheese,” Gayle said with a laugh.

Creating the restaurant will mean converting a section of the Fermentation Building’s ground floor into a kitchen. And that’s just a sliver of the extensive renovations the structure requires. The second floor is currently missing, destroyed by the fire in 1990, and the first floor consists of dirt littered with wood scraps.

Weinstein intends to restore the building and add plumbing and mechanics. He’ll also replace an elevator for access to the upper floors. But the foundation of the old industrial complex and its tall brick walls are perfectly stable, he said.

“The bones and the skeleton of the building are actually in very good condition,” Weinstein said.

One of the first board members Greiner recruited for 3S was Steven McHenry of McHenry Architecture in Portsmouth. It was McHenry who initially steered Greiner and Gayle toward the Fermentation Building. They originally hoped to locate their project downtown, but the rents were prohibitive.

“Everybody’s preference is to try to be as close to Market Square as possible, but there’s absolutely no way we could get close to Market Square and get the kind of rent that would make this kind of venture feasible,” McHenry said.

A number of businesses have considered using the Fermentation Building over the last 20 years—including the Smuttynose Brewing Company in Portsmouth—but nobody has bitten, until now. McHenry thinks the space is perfect for 3S.

“It’s this vast open space like nothing else in the city that I know of. It looked like a great raw opportunity,” he said. “It’s an opportunity to take a building of a very predictable size and scale and materials and do something a little more daring with it.”

Portsmouth recently approved a zoning rewrite that expanded the city’s Historic District along Islington Street, encompassing the area where the Fermentation Building stands. That complicates the process of making changes to the building’s exterior, but 3S organizers are hopeful they’ll be able to work with the city to alter the structure’s appearance while maintaining many of its historic qualities.

“We have, potentially, this opportunity to restore this historic landmark but juxtapose it with some contemporary elements and create a really unique building for Portsmouth,” Greiner said.

That building could tie in with Weinstein’s other plans for the area. He purchased the Fermentation Building about eight years ago and now owns four other buildings nearby. He also plans to build a 48-unit apartment and condominium complex with underground parking in the former Public Works property behind the 800 Islington St. plaza, bringing a residential building to the neighborhood.

One of the buildings Weinstein owns is another industrial relic of the Frank Jones Brewery, located adjacent to the Fermentation Building. He said he’s been in conversations with a number of possible tenants for that building, including the Portsmouth Museum of Art, but nothing has been decided.

“Hopefully, it will be an art-related use also,” Weinstein said.

PMA director Cathy Sununu confirmed the museum, currently located at One Harbour Place in downtown Portsmouth, is looking to expand into a larger and more visible building but declined to discuss specific prospects.

Any artistic uses at the old Frank Jones buildings would help bolster an arts scene off Islington Street that’s already bustling with activity. Russ Grazier, executive director of the Portsmouth Music and Arts Center on Brewery Lane, said he’s excited about Greiner’s vision for a facility that would invite crossover between different arts disciplines. He also thinks a midsize music venue is sorely needed in the area.

“We’ve got some great smaller venues in the restaurants and bars and some fantastic larger venues like The Music Hall and some churches, but the midsize venue that’s appropriate for a band like the Fiery Furnaces to come and play just doesn’t exist,” he said.

Greiner and Gayle have shared their plans with City Manager John Bohenko and economic development program manager Nancy Carmer, both of whom have expressed support. Noting that she has not seen specific details, Carmer said the plan will have to meet land use requirements, but she has high hopes for the project.

“This would be a nice anchor and a great reuse of the Frank Jones building,” she said. “It fits well with the city’s Master Plan, along with the Islington Street corridor action plan, just because we’re reusing buildings that have sat vacant.”

There are other plans brewing for new performance venues on the Seacoast. The Music Hall will open a 100-plus seat performance and learning space called The Loft on Congress Street next spring. And Kittery is considering plans for a Community Center at the former Frisbee School on Rogers Road, which could include a performing arts space with retractable seating for 200 people.

Greiner believes there’s room for all these venues to coexist. He pointed to Portland, Maine, a similarly-sized metropolitan area that has several music venues beyond the bar and club scene, including the Merrill Auditorium, the Port City Music Hall, the Space Gallery, The Asylum and Geno’s Rock Club.

“There’s a whole host of venues that Portland supports, and that’s just on top of their bar scene there, which supports live music. I think there’s definitely room for growth here in this market,” he said. “We see our market stretching up into southern Maine and out to Manchester and down into northern Mass.”

Greiner and Gayle recently launched a Facebook page for 3S, as well as a landing page for a Web site at www.3sarts.org. They’re still filling out their board of directors and gathering public feedback through the feasibility study, after which they’ll embark on an ambitious fundraising campaign. If all goes according to plan, they’ll open their doors by the fall of 2011.

For Greiner, 3S represents the realization of a dream he’s been cultivating for 10 years. His vision involves making the arts more accessible to the community, heightening the Seacoast’s status as an artistic and cultural haven.

“The idea that there are these three components that don’t stand alone but interact with each other is also, I think, a key aspect of the vision,” he said.