Waterville Creates!, an agency formed in 2014 under the aegis of the Waterville Regional Arts and Community Center in Waterville, Maine, has announced a $6 million challenge grant from the Harold Alfond Foundation in support of the Paul J. Schupf Art Center.

A collaborative project between Waterville Creates! and Colby College aimed at centralizing local arts institutions in downtown Waterville, the center will include a community art gallery, classrooms, a clay studio, rehearsal space for the Waterville Opera House, a box office for the Maine Film Center and Waterville Opera House, and flexible educational space.

To date, Waterville Creates! has raised $680,000 in gifts and pledges for the center. For every dollar contributed to the organization's community capital campaign, past and future, the foundation will provide $3 in matching funds.

"The Harold Alfond Foundation's investment in Waterville Creates! has enabled us to strengthen the long-standing, beloved arts organizations that have been a core part of Waterville's identity for decades by developing a new model for collaboration," said the organization's president and CEO, Shannon Haines. "The Paul J. Schupf Art Center will be the physical embodiment of that collaboration. By bringing Waterville's arts organizations together under one roof in the heart of downtown, the [center] will showcase our diverse arts programming and create new opportunities for collaboration and creative expression."