The Monterey Museum of Art sells a property, seeking to advance its vision of a downtown art hub.

When the Monterey Museum of Art brought in two consulting firms in 2021 to 2023 to help guide the museum’s leadership in weighing the options for the organization’s future, the feedback was near-universal: Focus on MMA’s Pacific Street property across from Colton Hall, the heart of Monterey’s historic downtown.

That advice spurred MMA to purchase the historic Miller Adobe in 2023, a stone’s throw away from MMA’s museum in a property leased from the City of Monterey at 559 Pacific St. – there’s just a patch of grass between them.

To help pay off the loan for the Miller Adobe purchase, MMA sold its 1.81-acre property at 590 Perry Lane in Monterey on June 6 for $2.3 million.

The buyer, Mitusugu Mori, who owns the Hana Gardens nurseries in Del Rey Oaks and Seaside, plans to turn the property back into a nursery.

MMA acquired the property in 2020 from the Sumida family, whose Cypress Gardens nursery at the location shuttered in 2017 after 65 years. (Five years later, the nonprofit sold it at a small loss.)

“It was a holding of the museum we just needed to move beyond,” says MMA Executive Director Corey Madden, who came on in 2020, after the Perry Lane property had been acquired. Where exactly “beyond” leads is somewhat of an unknown, but Madden says MMA is doubling down on downtown.

“The city is very enthusiastic about the museum being a hub of the cultural district,” Madden says. “Being next to the library, Colton Hall, Cooper Molera – this is where there’s really tremendous opportunity for us.”

The opportunity Madden sees is one of transformation, a reengagement of the community to make a relatively small place – MMA’s Pacific Street campus – into a catalyst for the city’s historic district.

Madden notes that MMA has the only art museum between San Jose and Santa Barbara that’s been accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.

Madden expresses a deep sense of museums’ purpose and value. Before museums, art could only be seen in the homes of the wealthy, but with public support that started taking hold during the Depression, Madden says, museums delivered art to the masses.

It’s a dynamic that reflects that the museum is not just for the public, but that it also needs the public to thrive.

“We need to come out strong to the public and say, ‘We need you.’ We want the public to be aware that we are working on something wonderful,” she says. “This is an important moment to forge the community’s future.”

The sale of the Perry Lane property also puts to rest, for the time being, what the future holds for the site, which the city’s state-mandated Regional Housing Needs Assessment plan listed as an opportunity site for housing.

Community Development Director Kim Cole says the property has plenty of water credits, but building housing on it would require Cal Am to put in a new water meter, which is currently prohibited by a state cease-and-desist order against the company for its historic overpumping of the Carmel River.