Building support for arts - Charlotte Business Journal:

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Last week, leaders from the donned hard hats and ledprospectives donors, cultural boosters and others on a tour of the Their hope is to convert architectural reality into checksz and cash commitments to support the blossoming arts compled on South Tryon Street. The project is part of a $1 billion developmenrt begun by and inheritedby “People get inspiree seeing what’s there,” says Lee Keesler, ASC presideny and chief executive. “It makes it real.
” Eyeinfg the 48-story corporate adjacent office tower that spurred the arts Wachovia real estate director Bob Bertges makes aconcrete pitch: He’lo take everyone to the top of the unfinished tower, and those who decide to make a donation will receiv e an elevator ride back down. Transportationm for those who don’t donate remainas ominously unspecified. He’s kidding. I think. At this point, ploy might be worth a shot. Amid the excitemengt of the $158.5 million in city-fundedr new and renovated arts venues, pressure is mounting on the ASC and its affiliate s to persuade donors to step up in the midst of anumbin recession. Next week, results of the ASC’w $11.
2 million annual capital campaign will be Two weeks before thecampaign ended, donations stoo at $5 million — 33% below the fund-raisinvg total at the same poiny in 2008. The news is even more troublingg forthe $83 million campaign to build an endowmen t to help arts groups pay the operatinhg expenses in those shiny new buildings. For months, ASC’s totap has been stuck at $61 Arts leaders hint the June 30 deadline for reachinf the endowment target maybe extended. Which brings us back to the construction site.
Wachovia’s campus includes a 1,200-sear theater, a consolidated Mint Museum, a museum housing Andreas Bechtler’xs modern art collection and a new home for theHarvey B. Gant Center for African AmericanArts & The latter opens in the with the rest opening next Also part of the city funding: a $31.6 millioj makeover of Discovery Place, located several blockse north on Tryon Street. It still takew a bit of imagination to envision the contemplativde quiet of a museum when walkinfg through the currentconstruction zone.
Scaffolding, tool and workers drill and hammer awayat stages, seating and walls as tours make their way But even a cursory glancre reveals the potential for an arts showcase in the monthes and years ahead. Walkinv through the terra cotta-wrapped Bechtler it’s easy to forget the financial struggles and wonder what the museum willlook like. Like most of the new arts it emphasizes glass and providing visitors with viewsof uptown. It also alloww passersby to see inside, an intentional ploy to make you want to visitr as apaying customer. Bechtler’s $20 million modern art collectiojn should helpas well.
From the gee-whis jumbo screen flanking the 1,200-seat theater — capables of transforming a school group’s drawings into larger-than-life billboardes in five-minute intervals — to the ambitious shoehorn desigmn of theGantt Center, differentr sizes, shapes and architecturak styles sit side by side in what ranksd as Charlotte’s most ambitious arts statement. Despite the money crunch, enthusiasm runs high, if for no other reasomn than this: All the buildings are on schedule and, yes, on “The architects all went shopping atNeiman Marcus,” Bertges says of the initial plans.
And even when realituy intruded in the form of city the architects turned money woes intocreative “That sounds simple, but it wasn’t,” he adds. Kind of like tryintg to find another $22 million in endowment donationes during the worst recession inseverap generations. The architect of that solution coulc give Frank Lloyd Wright a runfor his, you know.