Mass MoCA Director of Communications Jodi Joseph speaks about the upcoming opening of the new galleries and efforts to include the downtown on the museum's 'lovely moment.'

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art's 135,000 square-foot-expansion is opening this May — and local businesses are warned to be ready to capitalize on an expected surge in traffic.

"We're in a lovely moment at Mass MoCA right now," Jodi Joseph, MoCA's communications director, said at the North Adams Chamber of Commerce's annual meeting on Wednesday night. "We have a huge summer in front of us ... we are already looking at record attendance with the Nick Cave exhibition (in the massive Building 5.) It's received tons of press and lots of attention, a lot of fanfare ...

"We are on track to have our best year ever at Mass MoCA."

The museum also got the keys back last week to Building 6, part of the $55 million expansion that will feature the long-term participation of six critically acclaimed artists: James Turrell, Jenny Holzer, Laurie Anderson, Louise Bourgeois and Robert Rauschenberg Gunnar Schonbeck.

There are also one-off projects, like North Adams artist Mary Lum's commissioned work for the ingenious bike trail connector that cuts through Building 6 in preparation for the eventual Mohawk Bike Trail.  "Literally she has a paint brush in her hand right now, she's installing art," said Joseph.

"We're really hoping that people are coming to this and seeing it as a two- or three-day stay ... we just want to bring more and more people to North Adams and have them supporting local business while they're here visiting," she said.

With the museum about to become the largest contemporary art museum in the nation, it's trying to spread the wealth to North Adams' historically struggling downtown.

Museum officials are working with the city, colleges and other partners to develop a North Adams Exchange of a "series of public art moments."

"We are going to give retail some vitamins in the downtown and really try to bolster the offerings around town to give people more reasons to go downtown," Joseph said.

One of those art moments is a chance for visitors interested in Natalie Jeremijenko's famed "Tree Logic" to see trees that have been retired from the upside-down planters at Colegrove Park.

"They are now unfurling their branches and heading toward the sky at Colegrove Park and one of our missions is to make sure everyone who comes through Mass MoCA knows that," she said. "We get asked over and over 'what happens to the trees, are they OK?' Some, they are driven to tears. ... Now we can tell them they're four blocks away at Colegrove Park."

Secondly, the city's history and presence won't be forgotten as the museum touts its newest additions.

"We are working on a vigorous press campaign for our new opening and downtown North Adams is one of the centerpieces of the stories we're pitching to national and regional publications," Joseph said.

Cultural and local leaders have been looking to the massive developments at both Mass MoCA and the Clark Art Institute to pump up the North County's tourism profile. Both museums have had record-breaking attendance in the last few years, bringing in close to 400,000 visitors. But too many art lovers are getting in their cars and heading out after their day at the museums.

The goal, as noted many times by Mass MoCA director Joseph Thompson, is to create an experience that will keep people over for a night or two - and have them eating and shopping at local venues.

The museums can't do that alone, chamber President Glenn Maloney told the crowd at Bright Ideas Brewing on the museum campus.

"We, as a community, have got to tell people who we are and what we are," he said. "That's our responsibility. That's not Mass MoCA's responsibility: It's ours. "We have to capitalize on what's going on here."

One way will be moving to the next phase of wayfinding and branding for the city. Early last year, the nonprofit Partnership for North Adams helped fund the design and placement of three welcome to North Adams sings on the eastern and western entrances of Route 2 and on Route 8.

The next phase will be directional signage and replacing the outdated black hooped signs with the yellow and blue logos with the new green/blue logo featuring the clocktower, a spire, the river, Main Street, Mohawk Trail, the Hoosac Tunnel and the mountains.

"We're going to work on replacing those 15 or so signs with new ones that have accurate information that match the branding of the new signs," Maloney said, holding up a sample illustration from Graphic Impact Signs and the partnership. "This next phase of the project are going to cost about $50,000 to put up ... this is critical information."

Maloney expected to do fundraising for that effort; a third phase of smaller wayfaring signs will hopefully be done next year. Some of that burden could be lifted if the city wins the Small Business Revolution's $500,000 downtown boost.

The Deluxe Corp. group was in the city last week visiting small businesses downtown and City Councilor Benjamin Lamb, who helped spearhead the city's nomination process, is continuing to urge residents and business owners to tell the SBR what is so wonderful about North Adams using the #myNorthAdams hashtag on Facebook.

"They're following on social media and they're really looking to see what are the stories, what is the heritage, what do people really love about this area," Lamb said.

Maloney thanked the members for their support, Bright Ideas and Hot Tomatoes for hosting the gathering, and coordinator Ricco Fruscio and his wife, Joyce. It was important, he said, that everyone in the city continued to work together.

"Whether it's the chamber speaking or the city speaking, this is North Adams and it's really, really critical for us to be speaking the same language," he said. "We've got to communicate, we can't live in our own silos."