Posted: Thursday, February 25, 2016 10:30 pm
By MARKUS SCHMIDT Richmond Times-Dispatch
The groundbreaking for the planned Chesterfield Center for the Arts is set for late spring, and the $8.1 million, 350-seat theater is still expected to open in 2017 at Chester Village Green.
“It’s exciting, it’s been a long time coming. Some folks are saying, ‘We’ll believe it when we see it,’ and that’s why we are anxious to get construction started,” said Hugh Cline, chairman of the Chesterfield Center for the Arts Foundation board of directors.
In December, the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors gave final approval to funding the theater, authorizing the Economic Development Authority to raise $6.9 million in bonds on behalf of the county.
The Chesterfield Center for the Arts Foundation, a nonprofit partnering with the county in the project, has raised nearly $1.5 million in funding so far — and the donations keep coming in, Cline said.
“We raised the money to meet the community’s portion for construction, but we are still raising more money,” he said. “If somebody stepped up to write another check, we’d take it.”
While the design phase has not concluded, Cline said that the facility has a 20,000-square-foot floor plan. The main theater has an orchestra pit and comes with state-of-the-art sound and light equipment.
The building will also have classrooms and a 75-seat multipurpose room at just under 2,000 square feet with a video screen that will be rented for businesses, conferences or weddings. Other amenities include a large patio, a kitchen for caterers and concessions and an art gallery, most likely to be installed in the lobby area.
“It’ll be a pretty impressive structure; it will be 50 feet tall once the steel goes up,” Cline said.
A now-defunct local theater group first proposed the arts center in the 1980s, and voters in Chesterfield first agreed to fund the facility in a bond referendum in 2004. But the project was shelved when fundraising efforts stalled during the 2008-09 recession.
“The Economic Development Authority is involved as a partner to assist in the financing mechanism, (because) the board’s authority to issue those bonds have expired,” said Chesterfield County Budget Director Allan Carmody.
But because the board is still supportive of the project, the development authority will be issuing bonds on behalf of the county, Carmody said. “There is a series of agreements between the county, the EDA and the foundation that are permissible under the code,” he said.
After the theater opens next year, the Chesterfield Center for the Arts Foundation assumes day-to-day operational responsibility.
“There is not a county contribution to those operations, but there is some obligation on long-term building system replacement costs,” Carmody said. “But from staffing to cleaning and utility bills, all that is a responsibility of the foundation. They hope that the revenues will offset the cost of that structure.”
Cline said that the foundation plans to open the theater daily for events and performances. A full-time staff of three to four employees will oversee daily operations, including a budget director who will be hired next spring. Volunteers and part-time staff will help.
Following a relaunch of the fundraising campaign, the foundation asked Virginia Non-Profit Associates LLC to identify the kind of programs to put on in Chesterfield. The group surveyed 18 local organizations, from the Virginia Repertory Theatre to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
The center is envisioned as a community performing arts center with primarily regional programming.
“We would be similar to what the Glen Allen Cultural Center or Swift Creek Mill Theater (in Colonial Heights) do, but we don’t really see a competition there. In fact, we might collaborate,” Cline said, adding that the foundation wants the venue to be a model for other localities.
“As the largest public-private endeavor Chesterfield has done, the Center for the Arts will have a huge impact on the area,” Cline said.