SLO Museum of Art is expanding into a dramatic new space downtown. See the plans
The San Luis Obispo Museum of Art could get a lot bigger — and a lot more visible downtown — in the next two years.
Museum leadership on Tuesday confirmed the organization has quietly been working on a major $20 million plan to renovate and purchase a trio of downtown storefronts as part of a new 24,000-square-foot campus linking Mission Plaza and Higuera Street.
With the change, the museum proper will be relocated into a significantly larger space along downtown’s busiest street, while its current location at the corner of Broad and Monterey streets will be used for art classes and other educational programming.
If successful, the new space would mark a “bold” change in the cultural landscape of downtown, according to SLOMA executive director Leann Standish.
“When I moved into this community, I thought that there was a real gap — like a big missing tooth — in our community where there wasn’t a proper art museum,” Standish told The Tribune on Tuesday.
She’s not alone.
For a significant portion of its decades-long history, SLOMA has been itching to spread beyond its compact home at 1010 Broad St.
In 2009, the city approved a $10 million project that would have demolished the then-5,429-square-foot building and replaced it with a swooping three-story, 23,000-square-foot modern-design art center — complete with a controversial inverted cone tower. But the project wouldn’t survive through the looming economic recession, and before long, it was back to the drawing board.
Then in 2017, it once again unveiled plans to build a brand-new home, this time a $12 million, three-story, 26,000-square-foot building that would triple the amount of exhibition space and add new amenities.
By 2020, however, those plans had been nixed as well, with museum representatives saying “the time just wasn’t right.”
“The community wasn’t going to come up with the money required to replace this building in the time frame,” former board member Barb Renshaw said during a meeting in January 2020.
The new museum leadership, however, seems confident the third time is the charm.
“I love our little museum because I think it’s a great place to be a starter museum,” Standish, who came to helm SLOMA in late 2020, said Tuesday. “But what I remember is the thing that sort of put me in awe when I first saw a museum, was the vastness of it. To be able to see art that was life-size and developing and really pulled you into a narrative.”
“I think once we are able to have that 4,000-square-foot gallery, the kinds of exhibitions that will show there will really help people see themselves in the work, really help people see the world in the work,” she continued. “It will really draw them together.”
Where is SLOMA’s new museum going to be?
Rather than once again attempting to build an all-new building — a likely pricey endeavor given today’s economic climate and higher construction costs — SLOMA’s new expansion will revitalize already existing architecture in the downtown core.
Under the plan, the newly renovated museum will be located in the three “underused” retail properties at 778, 782 and 786 Higuera St., according to a SLOMA news release.
The biggest of the spaces is The Network building, which has slowly been emptying of tenants in recent years amid discussion of a major renovation of the space.
In July, Ethiopian restaurant Ebony announced it would be moving from its spot in The Network by the end of the year while Proof and Gather Baking Company — also in the same building — shut its doors for good that same month.
Most recently, it was thought the site would be home to a four-story, mixed-use project that would create an open-air public walkway connecting to Mission Plaza, though those plans now seem to have been abandoned.
Meanwhile, the space at 782 Higuera St. has remained vacant since the somewhat mysterious closure of Creeky Tiki sometime in 2023.
Notably, that stretch of property includes another valuable asset: a winding patio that connects the back of the storefronts and overlooks San Luis Creek and Mission Plaza.
SLOMA Board of Directors co-chair Cheryl Cuming told The Tribune she was excited by the idea of repurposing these creekside retail and restaurant spaces into something new.
“I think we all look to these spaces, and we see them, and we want them to become something, because we want the downtown to continue to be vibrant,” she said. “We all love the creek area. We want this connectivity of being able to come downtown and spend an entire evening here doing lots of different things, or a weekend or whatever. I love the idea that it just kind of feeds into all of that.”
The project also supports a longstanding push to establish a cultural arts district in downtown San Luis Obispo, where the city and donors have sunk significant investment in recent years into major projects like the new parking structure and SLO Repertory Theatre.
What will new downtown museum look like?
According to Standish, the new museum will preserve the outer elements of the existing storefronts while converting the inside into a multi-gallery space, complete with a gift shop, cafe and rentable spaces.
It also, importantly, will continue to be free of charge.
“I’m obsessed with this vision,” Standish said, noting she envisions a place tourists and locals alike can enjoy both every day and on special occasions.
Guests will be greeted to the space from the Higuera Street entrance, where a large, airy lobby will feed into four galleries of various sizes, she said.
“Immediately you’re blown away before you even walk in, because you can see art through the glass on half of it, and then you can see all the way through in all the great light,” Standish said. “Architecturally, it’s just gorgeous. So you’re drawn in.”
From there she said she anticipates guests will be able to “spend time with the largest exhibit” before wandering through the other offerings.
At 4,000 square feet the largest gallery is expected to take up most of the converted Creeky Tiki space, while other smaller galleries could offer a more cozy viewing experience for different types of exhibits, she added.
In all, the climate-controlled converted space will nearly triple SLOMA’s museum capacity, allowing for both more Central Coast artists to be represented and more major traveling exhibitions to show, according to the release.
Additionally, the museum will get a few new types of spaces it doesn’t have in its more humble current building. Chief among those is a cafe where someone can grab a glass of wine or a coffee and a gift shop complete with SLO-centric items, Standish said.
It will also have an outdoor art terrace connecting the museum to the creek walk — and by default its former home, which will instead be converted into dedicated learning spaces.
There, SLOMA will offer an expanded youth and adult education center, the return of summer art camps for kids and increased partnerships with local schools, the release said.
“This project is about more than expanding gallery walls — it’s about expanding opportunity,” SLOMA board co-chair Ermina Karim said in the release. “When a city invests in creativity, it invests in connection, education and shared pride. A thriving cultural anchor like SLOMA draws people downtown, supports restaurants, retailers and hotels and keeps our city vibrant year-round.”
How is SLOMA expansion being paid for?
The project is expected to cost roughly $20 million split over two phases.
The first phase will cost $10.4 million, according to the release, and cover renovating the retail spaces into the new museum space.
That’ll be followed by a second $10 million phase in which SLOMA will purchase the newly renovated Higuera Street facility outright, and then set up its endowment to continue to pay for free community programming, according to the release.
And the group is already well on its way to completely funding that first phase.
According to the release, SLOMA has to date already raised $8 million and kicked off a $2 million challenge grant in which the Forbes family has promised to match every dollar raised through December.
If successful, by the end of December, SLOMA will have more than what it needs to get its first phase of the project underway, with a planned opening downtown sometime in early 2027.
“It’s funny because someone said to us, you know, you could build the exact same square footage out by the airport for like, $5 million,” Standish said. “Not that it’s horrible, it’s just that I really believe that our vision for the museum is that it’s more than a place you visit just to look at our art. It’s a center, and it’s a part of the experience of coming to this area.”
Any who wish to donate to the expansion project can do so at sloma.org/join/donate. Those considering bequeathing funds to the organization can talk to a representative by contacting SLOMA at 805-543-8562 or via email.
This story was originally published November 5, 2025 at 10:12 AM.
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