HOLYOKE — Losing steam after more than a decade confronting the ups and downs of running an entertainment and dining complex, the owners of Gateway City Arts are looking to sell.

“I think Vitek and I got worn out,” co-owner Lori Divine said Friday.

Divine and husband and co-owner Vitek Kruta are hoping someone will want to take over the 28,400-square-foot canal-side building, where they created two theaters, a restaurant, bistro, gallery and studios, as it is. The asking price is $4.5 million.

“We’re trying to find a buyer who’ll keep it going as a venue — that is our first hope,” she said. “We’ve put so much of ourselves into this in every way for the last 12 years.”

Divine stressed that the business is not closing, and parties, music and poetry are scheduled through Jan. 1

“We’re not closing until we have a sale,” she said. “We’re busy until the end of the year.”

After that, they’ll be scaling back, staying open for private parties and weddings, and continuing to cater in-house events. Judd’s restaurant will no longer be open to the public.

“We’re looking for more predictable events,” she said.

She cited the randomness of the restaurant business as problematic, where two customers show up one night and 50 the next.

“You can’t maintain that,” she said, offering praise for the staff’s loyalty and understanding.

“We hope to keep people employed.”

Kruta and Divine opened Gateway City Arts in an abandoned Race Street warehouse in May 2012, and they’ve been adapting ever since.

“To survive we had to add on and take away things,” Divine said.

Bit by bit, they added a café, a smaller performance space, studios and co-working spaces. In January 2020, the restaurant opened.

“We were on an upward trajectory,” Divine said. “The night before we closed for COVID, we had 700 people in the building. Then we shut down for 16 months.”

In December 2020, Divine and Kruta announced that the venue was closing down, unable to survive the protracted shutdown and uncertainty for the future.

But the outlook brightened again in April 2021, when Gateway announced a partnership with concert promoter DSP Shows, through which DSP would lease Gateway’s large music hall, rechristened Race Street Live, and begin booking shows again by late summer 2021.

After an up-and-down 2022, though, DSP ended its lease of the music hall. John Sanders, a partner and talent buyer in the business, said at the time that DSP hoped to continue bringing shows to Race Street, but booking for the space would be handled, as before, by Divine and Kruta.

Artists who performed at Gateway City Arts over the years include Rubblebucket, Jonathan Richman, The Beat, X, Thurston Moore, Junior Brown, The Motet, Yo La Tengo and Sonny Landreth/Marcia Ball.

As a farewell celebration, Gateway City Arts is hosting a party on Saturday, Dec. 15, with music by Northampton’s own Johnny and the Flashbacks, who played the opening of the venue back in May 2012.

“It’s been a great run, that’s why we are going to celebrate,” Divine said.

James Pentland can be reached at jpentland@gazettenet.com.