Helper Project mission to revitalize, beautify and enhance culture of Carbon County mining town

    Helping Helper is what the Helper Project is all about.
    From new downtown trash cans to repaired concrete pillars at the Rio Theatre, there are also doggie waste stations, new Main Street banners and park amenities in the works or already in place.
    Amenities and renovations aren’t all of it, either. Cultural enhancements are also part of the master plan, from First Friday sights and sounds to concerts sure to attract fans from all around.
    The Utah Youth Symphony and Philharmonic Orchestras play this Saturday at the Rio Theatre, thanks to the Helper Project.
    But bigger things are coming to this tiny little Carbon County town, fruits of the heart, from people who see in the old mining community a diamond in the rough.
    A renaissance of sorts is underway and at its center is architect and painter Anne Morgan Jespersen. Though not alone by any means in giving back to Helper, her visionary spirit embues much of the vibe that has Helper residents and visitors alike buzzing.
    Anne and husband Roy Jespersen are responsible for the renovation of the conspicuous art gallery-slash-domicile along Helper Main Street, called amjworks. A fine folk band plays there every First Friday.
    Roy is a former financial planner with Wasatch Advisors. When he retired he became involved in a number of philanthropic endeavors.    
    “I became active in a lot of community things. I wanted to do other things other than what I’d been doing in my career,” he said.
    He became board president of the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, served as chairman of Choice Humanitarian, which does humanitarian work all around the world, and was a trustee of Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif.
    “Anne was an architect. She started painting full time when I retired. Coming to Helper, I got involved in kinda community service things that I wanted to do,” Roy recalled. “And at some point a few years later she said ‘I would really like to live and die in Helper.’ She fell in love with the city … so she bought this building.”
    Anne had been coming to Helper for 20 years, attending artists’ workshops, following in the footsteps of David Dornan, who is cited most as the person responsible for drawing a number of world-class artists to Helper.
    Anne says buying her Main Street building, renovating it, and making it both a home for her and her husband was not all the project entailed. It was a salvage job in more ways than one.
    “So, we restructured this and completely redid it, thinking it was one way to preserve and protect all of these buildings down here on this south part of Main Street,” she said. “When we were doing this, we thought, wouldn’t it be great if there were some other projects surrounding this.”
    That idea became the seed from which the Helper Project sprouted.
    Into a mighty oak one might see it grow.
    In less than two years, the project has morphed into a 501(c)(3), raised thousands of dollars, formed a board of directors that reads like a Who’s Who of artists, local business leaders, tourism experts, government officials and professionals of all stripes, and has begun soliciting requests for funds and project ideas from the community.
    “Basically what happened, when we came down here, the genesis of forming the Helper Project was just how can we use our experience in working for other nonprofits and our connections that we’ve made, not just in Carbon County, where we had very few connections, but in Salt Lake and along the Wasatch Front to help in any way we can here in Helper, which is our mission statement. The revitalization, the beautification and cultural enhancement of Helper, Utah,” Roy said. “It’s no secret that communities here don’t have a lot of funding. So we thought maybe we could help supplement some of that.”
    The board of directors meets quarterly, and includes local business owner Tony Basso, artists Melanie Steele and Kathleen Royster, former Helper Mayor Dean Armstrong, Michelle Sulley of the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, and Shalee Johansen, Carbon County’s former tourism director, who is renovating her own building on Main Street.
    “Right now, we are meeting quarterly. Whenever we have a project that needs to be funded, we can either meet, or depending upon the amount of the funding, we can do some of that electronically,” Roy said.
    Royster, who operates a ceramics studio on Main Street credits the Helper Project with bringing back a sense of hope to the once downtrodden city.
    “I think pre-Helper Project, this community, because this town was empty, there was just this lack of hope. Now, since we have some new leadership on the city council and the Helper Project has stepped up to supplement the rebuilding of this community, you see a lot of hope. And that’s significant,” she said. “The day I drove into town in 2001, there were tumbleweeds blowing down the street. There was no hope.”
    One longtime Helper business owner recalled how the buildings on the side of Main Street where both Royster and the Jespersens now live and work, were each selling for $5,000.
    “And that was $3,000 too much,” the business owner laughed.
    That’s a stark contrast from where Helper is today. Another longtime Carbon County entrepreneur recently remarked that by his estimation $5 million of outside money has made its way into rebuilding Helper over the last few years. Anne says this is just the beginning. Working with city leaders on planning and zoning recently, the Helper Project is set to develop official documents that will help the nonprofit seek funding for more ambitious projects from corporations and wealthy donors.
    One long-term idea is to acquire the railroad depot and surrounding property in Helper and rehabilitate it.    
     “I really started looking at the train station and grounds. It’s a complicated endeavor, because it’s privately owned by Union Pacific,” she said.
    If anyone can accomplish the acquisition, it’s Anne.
    “Anne is the board chairperson. She’s the boss. And she runs a really tight ship. She gets mad at me sometimes because I’m not following the correct procedure,” her husband said. “She has it down.”
    Anne admits she couldn’t do everything by herself. Partnerships with key local people and organizations has been fundamental to Helper Project’s success so far.
    “We’ve been fortunate to build strong relationships with Zions Bank and with some other really important foundations and corporations. We’ve really done well. Zions Bank has been instrumental” in supporting several projects, she said.
    The Helper Project, though, is not just about handing out money. There is a process Anne says is in place to ensure ethical practices are upheld throughout the process.
    “We try to come up with projects that are viable, that fit within the mission statement, that are realistic for us to go out and solicit funds for,” she said. “We’ve got a format that is ethical. It’s not just about handing out money. Certain criteria must be met.”
    One big part of the process is that people in search of funds for their idea must be sponsored by a board member, who will then work with them to get their idea before the whole board.
    “People have to submit an application for funding. People have to get a board member to support it,” Roy said. “If it’s a big project, we’ll go out and help that person find funding through a grant or some other sources we’ve acquired over the years through other projects.”
    To raise funds the project mostly has worked with artists, putting together exhibitions and using the proceeds of art sales as seed money.
    Last year, the group hosted 18 of Utah’s finest female artists, asking them to donate work based on their concept of what a nest best represents. The group raised $40,000 with just that one show.
    But fund-raising has also come from some unexpected sources. For example, a Price doctor had a piece of land for sale, but instead he donated it to the Helper Project.
    “The doctor did and we sold it within months for additional funds. That’s how that happens,” Roy said.
    A fund-raiser set for August, much like the Nest showing, will utilize 18 of Utah’s best landscape artists, each producing a work for sell the subject of which will center around the landscape surrounding Helper.
    As for bigger plans, work has started on soliciting major project ideas involving consultants coming up with complex integrated lifestyle, recreation and tourism concepts. Once those ideal concepts are identified, the next step will be to secure funding and hire the contractors to execute the plans.
    Success for the Helper Project is not only in executing the smaller ideas, but integrating the range of ideas, big and small, to remake Helper into the community visionaries like Anne believe it can become.
    “I think the main goal is attracting more commerce, creating more jobs, and developing more tourism. It’s not going to happen in mining. It’s not going to happen with the railroad,” Roy said of what success, in the end, should look like. “Big changes aren’t going to come here just because there are artists here. No way … the ultimate goal is to get some economic stability here.”
    And of course have a little fun doing it—the cultural leg of the proverbial table.
    Car shows, art exhibitions and this weekend a world class performance by the Utah youth orchestras, free to the public and brought to Helper by the project.
    Barbara Scowcroft, the orchestras’ music director and coordinator, has known Roy since junior high school when they were students together in Chicago.
    “Roy and Anne Jespersen are the reason I’m here,” she said. “This is the first time I’ve done it (a performance in Helper) and the kids are really curious. What is this? What is Helper?
    “Hardly anyone has heard of Helper.”
     That might soon change, should Anne and the Helper Project get its way