A coalition of Washington arts leaders are urging city officials to preserve Dupont Underground, fearing that the popular arts space will be turned over to developers or another group after the nonprofit’s lease expires in April 2020.

Dupont Underground CEO Robert Meins went public with the possible closure earlier this month, at the opening of what could be the final art installation at the subterranean space .

Meins told the sold-out crowd that he and his board members have been trying to negotiate a lease extension with the city for the past eight months. Everyone who attended the event, the annual World Press Photo DC exhibit, was asked to sign a “Save the Dupont Underground” petition, and many did.

The space was originally a streetcar tunnel, before being largely abandoned after the streetcars stopped running in 1962. Many ideas came and went, and in the 1990s, the space briefly served as a trolley-themed food court (it lasted less than a year). But seeing the possibility for a vibrant arts venue, residents began lobbying the city to reuse the space around 2010. They finally got a lease in 2014, and after demolishing unnecessary structures and cleaning up the tracks, Dupont Underground opened to the public in 2016 with an installation featuring plastic orbs previously exhibited at the National Building Museum’s ball pit exhibit.

The diverse list of local groups and artists who have since hosted events in the Underground includes artist Eric Dickson, choreographer Sarah J. Ewing, Flower Bomb Fest, cellist Wytold, and the TBD Immersive theater collective.

Yet the nonprofit had just $5,000 in the bank when Meins took over as CEO in March, he says. After several months of successful programming, the Underground is now in better shape, both physically and financially, according to Meins.

But the CEO says “senior-level officials” in the real estate team from the deputy mayor’s office told him two weeks ago that the Underground’s lease, which ends in April of 2020, will not be renewed.

Representatives from the department did not return a call requesting comment. In a statement sent to DCist on Thursday, John Falcicchio, the interim deputy mayor for planning and economic development, said the city is open to continuing talks.

“Although Dupont Underground has signaled it will not be able to fulfill the terms of its agreement with the District of Columbia, we will discuss ways that they can continue to keep the space activated for an interim period,” the statement reads. “The time will allow Dupont Underground to demonstrate they can become financially viable to make capital improvements and realize the full potential of the space. We remain committed to keeping this unique space as an asset of the creative economy.“

D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson and Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans also joined the Dupont Underground debate on Thursday. In a letter obtained by DCist, the lawmakers urge Falcicchio to grant the nonprofit group a 10-year lease, warning that Dupont Circle “does not need more commercial space.”

In the letter, Mendelson and Evans write that Falcicchio should consider forgiving a $150,000 payment that the Dupont Underground still owes the city under the terms of its original 5.5 year lease, which did not include monthly rent. Instead, a so-called “balloon payment” was to be due in November 2019. Mendelson and Evans suggest that the money would be better used for “significant capital improvements” instead.

Meins, his seven-member board, and a band of 20 volunteers have commissioned architects to develop plans to bring the space up to code, and they have lobbied partners and lawmakers to support the renewal of their lease.

So far, Meins says he has raised about $70,000 toward the $150,000 payment, and more money could be in the bank soon. But the Underground only received its nonprofit designation two years ago, and without a lease extension, he says he has been unable to secure grant funding for bathrooms, fire suppression systems, and accessibility features. Mein says he has also been unable to book arts events for spring 2020, even though several groups and embassies say they want to use the space, and will pay up if the Underground’s lease is extended.

“I’ve made financial projections 10 years out as to how much needs to be spent to do what,” Meins says. “And we have very conservative planning for how long it would take to generate the revenue to pay for all that.”

The dispute comes amid a time of turmoil in Mayor Muriel Bowser’s relationship with the arts community. Since the spring, Bowser has introduced measures to transfer control of the city’s arts infrastructure from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities to a new Creative Affairs Office. Mendelson and the D.C. Council have since been embroiled in a high-profile spat with the mayor about who is in charge of D.C.’s cultural events, arts funding, and public art projects.

In their letter, Mendelson and Evans said that they understand the deputy mayor’s office “is actively soliciting a change” in management of the space, which they called a mistake. “We cannot emphasize enough that it would be a risk for DMPED to start over given the dismal history of utilizing the tunnels prior to Dupont Underground,” they wrote. “It also would be unpopular with the arts community and unnecessarily competitive with the Dupont Circle commercial sector already struggling with broad market changes.

Meins says that if the Underground is turned over to developers, this would not be the first time Bowser has reversed plans by arts groups that were set in motion by her predecessor, Mayor Vincent Gray. During the first month of her administration, Bowser said she would be reexamining proposals for two former city schools that had received prior approval to become mixed-use arts venues.

“I understand from people who have been around D.C. politics for a long time that this is a pattern that repeats itself: The activation of the space by smaller organizations that are then taken over,” Meins says.

In the case of the Dupont Underground, commercial developers have already had a chance with the failed food court. There are still remnants from that project, which Meins says would cost around $60,000 to remove.

Although he’s a longtime resident of Dupont Circle, Meins only discovered the Underground in 2017. “I came to the space as a customer,” he says. As a development economist originally from the Netherlands, Meins was wanted to bring an exhibit from the Amsterdam-based photojournalism organization World Press Photo to the United States.

Meins and Lars Boering, managing director of World Press Photo, considered using in the former Spanish ambassador’s residence on 16th Street. The palatial building would have been perfect for sipping cocktails and looking at photos, Meins says. But he and Boering wanted a space that would be “democratizing,” a space where you could “come wearing yoga pants and bring a cup of coffee,” he said. That space was the Underground.

After a second World Press Photo exhibition last year, the Dupont Underground board asked Meins to consider replacing retiring CEO Susan Corrigan.

Meins accepted, and says that he immediately began looking for partnerships that could help pay the rent, particularly with embassies who were looking to host both public and private events. In September, the Alliance for New Music-Theater became the resident theater company, and spent $12,000 installing a new stage and lighting.

“Many artists, both local and international, see [the Underground] as a truly unique-to-Washington cultural venue,” says Susan Galbraith, artistic director of New Music Alliance. On Sunday the company ends its current run of The Havel Project, a two-play cycle inspired by Czech dissident Vaclav Havel, at Dupont Underground. Next year, Galbraith hopes to collaborate with Washington Choral Arts Society and remount site-specific oratorio Path of Miracles, which would position singers all over the circular path of the Underground.

“I’m just concerned about what’s going to happen with Dupont Underground,” she says. “We absolutely want to invest in this.”

Eva Schoefer, director of the Austrian Cultural Forum, also fears she’ll be forced to change venues given the Underground’s lease limbo. The Underground typically closes during the coldest months of the year, but in the spring, she wants to present a multi-media installation and performance by Austrian artist Stefan Tiefengraber. “It is such a beautiful space,” Schoefer says. “We embassies are ready to invest money in it.”

Amid the uncertainty, Schoefer is postponing making plans. But she believes Meins is the right guy to make the Underground a viable arts space.

“He’s doing an amazing job,” Schoefer says. “Since he arrived, the events have changed so much. The management is so much better and the promotion is so much better. There are so many more people there.”

Meins hopes the 2019 World Press Photo exhibition will draw several thousand more patrons to the Underground before the exhibition closes on Dec. 9. The photojournalism organization wants to become a permanent tenant on the west side of the tracks, once the remnants of the former food court are cleared away.

“We have had three great years of cooperation and the DU organization has gone through a good process of professionalization,” Boering wrote in an email to DCist. He pointed out that the Newseum is slated to close in December, so his organization wants to step in and provide a venue for photojournalism. With World Press Photo occupying the west side, local arts groups and embassies would then be able to host performances and install art on the east side.

But Meins says that none of that can happen unless the city returns to the negotiating table, and does so quickly.

“We’ve spent eight months coalition building,” Meins said. “Now it’s 11:59 and 59 seconds, and we’ve decided that we’ve got to put this story out there.”

This post has been updated to correct that Meins’ October phone call was with senior-level officials in the office of the deputy mayor.