NILES — A local foundation still seeks to build a contemporary art museum in the Niles area, but its result may be different than its executive members’ original plan.

The Jacob K. Brown Contemporary Art and Center Foundation presented project updates for its Jacob K. Brown Contemporary Art Museum at a Tuesday Niles Art Association meeting at the Niles District Library.

While other foundation volunteer staff spoke of the positive impacts an art museum could have on the Niles community, especially its children, secretary Jan Schrader spoke about the results of a feasibility study. The foundation had commissioned the study at the recommendation of larger foundations from which staff hoped to receive money.

The study’s conductors, Hopkins Fundraising Consulting, of Ada, Michigan, interviewed 27 leaders in business, corporate and professional sectors in the area.

“There was a broad agreement that the Niles region was in dire need of economic development,” Schrader said. “Some agreed that visual and performing arts can have a positive impact on a local economy.”

Where issues about the art museum arose was not in the passion and commitment of the foundation’s team, Schrader said, but in that team’s vision.

“Cautionary trends included those who thought the plan was overly ambitious,” she said. “These people questioned whether a museum would have a significant economic impact.”

The foundation is seeking upwards of $3 million in grants and donations to fund its contemporary art museum. It would be placed on 8.5 acres of land on N. Fifth Street near the Niles Villa Apartments, which was donated by foundation president Jeanne Watson.

Competing fundraising campaigns, like the Niles-Buchanan YMCA and Spectrum Health Lakeland, would make fundraising difficult, said some interviewees.

“A major conclusion of the study was we should consider a more modest step with a focus on programming with a primary focus on art education for children,” Schrader said. “If we adjust our community vision and goals, community leaders would, in time, offer support through volunteers, donations and leadership.”

The Jacob K. Brown Foundation is now reconsidering its next steps, Watson said, but it still plans to build a contemporary art museum in some capacity.

The larger foundations it originally sought grant money from have not refused to consider the Jacob K. Brown Foundation for grant money, but a revisioning to “prove” itself needed, Watson said.

Vice president Judith Racht said she has been looking at local properties and their buildings to see if they may work as temporary locations for a museum until its proposed larger site on N. Fifth Street can be built.

Foundation staff said that a contemporary art museum would have a positive impact on the community’s children and that the Niles area had the right demographics to support a museum.

In her review of the feasibility study, Schrader said that some interviewees said an art museum would not fit with the community.

“They also felt that a contemporary art museum was a poor cultural fit for Niles and described Niles as a blue collar, lower income community and unlikely to be drawn to an art museum,” she said.

Trustee Marjorie Bowles disagreed with some of the interviewees.

“I’m sorry if some people in Niles think this is a hodunk place,” she said. “So be it for them, because it’s not. If you say that, you’re kind of putting children down, right? Because that’s what we’re here for.”

Schrader noted that the feasibility study was correct in emphasizing the need for the museum to provide children art education programs. The arts, she said, are often the first programs cut in school systems.

“Our young people have so many opportunities to get involved in all ends of the spectrum,” Racht said. “Curators, conservators, museum staff — there’s a whole range of things besides being an artist involved with the arts.”

If the foundation’s original plan becomes a reality, the museum would contain multiple gallery spaces, a coffee shop and a terrace surrounded by natural space and a water feature.