The pride of Columbus

In a town once known largely for its textile mills and military base, art supporters have high hopes for its new RiverCenter for the Performing Arts, an impressive five-story complex that is the crown jewel in the city's renaissance efforts.

By JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing Arts Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published June 30, 2002

COLUMBUS, Ga. -- The most impressive concert hall in Georgia is not in Atlanta. Nor is it in the Peach State's historic coastal city, Savannah, or its major university town, Athens.

RiverCenter for the Performing Arts, a sparkling three-hall complex, celebrated its grand opening in May in an unlikely location: Columbus.

The 2,000-seat Bill Heard Theatre in the RiverCenter can accommodate everything from ballet to political debates. [Photo: RiverCenter]

Not too long ago, this city was mostly known as home to the Army's sprawling infantry base, Fort Benning. Textile mills lined the Chattahoochee River, and the dying downtown business district was dotted with vacant storefronts.

In wide-open Phenix City, just across the river in Alabama, prostitution, gambling and drug trafficking flourished.

Until 1979, when Interstate 185 arrived, Columbus was the biggest city in the country without an interstate highway. Vestiges of segregation hung on into the 1980s, when a company cited the existence of a whites-only civic club among its reasons for not relocating to Columbus, whose population of 185,000 is about 40 percent black.

But the city has changed, and it has taken on a surprising new character for anyone who still thinks of it as an insular military and mill town.

In one of last month's grand-opening concerts, opera singer Jessye Norman, a Georgia native, gave a recital of German lieder and Negro spirituals in RiverCenter's 2,000-seat Bill Heard Theatre.

"The night of the Jessye Norman concert, I felt like I was in New York, on Broadway somewhere," said Calvin Smyre, a state representative from Columbus. "It had that aura to it. People were so proud. It had to be one of the best moments I've ever witnessed in Columbus, Georgia."

Indeed, this old Confederate stronghold, site of one of the last land battles of the Civil War, has positioned itself for a renaissance built on a downtown devoted to historic restoration and the arts.

Broadway, the main drag, is cultivating a mix of restaurants and art galleries, even that hallmark of dashing urban life, a loft apartment development. Bed and breakfast inns have sprouted in a nearby neighborhood.

RiverCenter, the performing arts venue that rises five stories and takes up a whole block at the south end of Broadway, is the crowning glory of Columbus' turnaround. Though the city's newfound identity is a work in progress, boosters can imagine it as a weekend getaway for residents of the metropolitan areas of Atlanta, Birmingham and Montgomery.

Local businesses see the center as a tool to recruit and retain employees who want big-city cultural amenities in a midsized city.

"We all like the arts, but frankly, this is a driver of economic development," said John Greenman, publisher of the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. "We're a smaller newspaper, but we compete regionally and nationally for people, and one of the things we sell about Columbus today is how the place has changed and improved.

"You don't need to leave to find interesting things to do at night anymore."

Rep. Smyre led the effort that landed $17-million in state funding for the center in 1995 from then-Gov. and now U.S. Sen. Zell Miller. That commitment from the state, which owns the center, got the ball rolling for a remarkable fundraising campaign called the Columbus Challenge, spearheaded by the local Bradley-Turner Foundation.

More than $100-million was raised for construction of the complex as well as endowment and capital support for it and seven other cultural organizations. Included in that group are the outstanding Columbus Museum and the Springer Opera House, a theater that traces its history to 1871. On a per capita basis, that amount could well be the most money raised for the arts by any place in the United States.

"Part of the genius of the Columbus Challenge was to bring the entire arts community into the campaign," said Susan Lawhorne, chairman of the RiverCenter board and a longtime museum board member.

"That took any territorial attitudes out of play. By trusting in the process, all of us reaped untold value in the spirit of cooperation and collaboration that now exists among the various arts organizations."

In another innovation, the center houses the Schwob School of Music of Columbus State University, whose central campus is in northeast Columbus. The conservatory, with 300 students, occupies half the center and is primary user of its two smaller halls. Legacy Hall, a 450-seat jewel of a recital space, has a splendid $1-million pipe organ, the gift of a local organ lover.

Legacy Hall, a 450-seat jewel of a recital space, boasts this splendid $1-million pipe organ. [Times Photo: Robert N. Jenkins]

"This was one of the most significant public-private partnerships I've ever seen," said Smyre, whose role as chairman of the higher education committee in the House of Representatives was pivotal in bringing the university on board. An African-American, he becomes chairman of the RiverCenter board in July.

Smyre enjoys showing off the complex to visitors from Atlanta, which does not have a first-rate performing arts center. A campaign to build a new symphony orchestra hall there has taken years to get off the ground.

"People from Atlanta have been here, and they just shake their heads," he said.

RiverCenter makes a striking impression, with a red-brick and glass design that blends with other downtown renovations: 19th century cotton warehouses and iron works by the river have been turned into offices and a convention center.

The brick motif is carried through on Riverwalk, a magnet for bicyclists, runners and strollers that meanders 12 miles along the Chattahoochee to Fort Benning.

Inside, the center has decorative touches that lend a distinctly Columbus flavor. The lobby carpet features the elegant design of a wrought-iron fence at a local home, and "worker bees," symbolizing the Columbus work ethic, are in the pattern of seat cushions in Heard Theatre.

The center architects -- Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, a New York firm, and Columbus-based Hecht, Burdeshaw, Johnson, Kidd and Clark Inc. -- made some interesting choices in the multipurpose theater. It is designed to accommodate everything from ballet and theater to the Miss Georgia Pageant, and from symphony orchestra concerts to a gubernatorial candidates' debate.

Structurally, Heard is a "fat" space, with a relatively short distance from the stage to the back wall of the balcony, a generous width to accommodate side boxes and a soaring 90-foot ceiling.

The burgundy-and-gold visual scheme is dominated by wire-mesh ribbons that crisscross overhead. Dramatically lighted, they give a domelike effect to the hall and make it feel more intimate.

The acoustics are bright and well-focused, judging from a May pops concert by the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, with jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval. The high strings in particular seemed to have a lot of presence, heard with vivid clarity from a seat in the mezzanine.

Apart from that orchestra, next season's classical programming, including violinist Midori, pianist Richard Goode, the vocal ensemble Chanticleer and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, is being presented by the college's school of music, in either Legacy Hall or Heard Theatre.

"A lot of the high-risk things are not under my umbrella, which will help the bottom line," said executive director James Baudoin, who was been at RiverCenter since arriving from a Phoenix, Ariz., performing arts center in 1997.

"What I'm responsible for is the celebrity, variety sort of things: Peking Acrobats, the Lettermen, North Carolina Dance Theatre, Carrot Top."

A series of touring musicals such as Fosse, South Pacific and Saturday Night Fever is also on the agenda. Baudoin thinks RiverCenter can avoid the fate of counterparts in Florida and elsewhere whose reliance on revenue from long-running Broadway shows tends to shut out symphony orchestras and other hometown groups from access to the halls.

"That's not what we want to be about," he said. "We want to support the Columbus Symphony. We want to support the CSU music programs. In the end, this is an educational institution. A lot of what we do is not about making money."

Baudoin projects a break-even budget in 2002-03, but he is aware it might take time for Columbus to be able to support a full-blown season. As he points out, the city's average annual per capita income is only about $25,000. He intends to market to a wider area that reaches as far as the southern suburbs of Atlanta, about a two-hour drive away.

Among the concerts in connection with last month's opening, one was a roaring success at the box office. Country star Travis Tritt quickly sold out. Jessye Norman, on the other hand, was a slow sell, and about 100 tickets went unsold.

Sandoval, the trumpeter, had sold out an earlier appearance with the Columbus Symphony at its rundown former venue, Three Arts Theatre, but the Heard balcony was virtually empty for his return engagement in May.

Having just completed his 15th season as music director, George Del Gobbo is excited about being in the center, where the orchestra now has its offices. Made up of freelance musicians from around the Southeast, the CSO will play six classical programs plus a mix of pops and educational concerts next season.

Del Gobbo dreams of being able to do something that would draw artistic attention to Columbus while also enjoying popular appeal, such as a Gershwin festival, highlighted by, say, a staged concert of a musical such as Girl Crazy. But he also sounds a cautious note about the infusion of arts and entertainment in a city that was not a cultural mecca in the first place.

"In a way, all the audience for the arts in Columbus are the same people," he said. "It's the same 600 or 700 people that go to everything.

"Now I have this fear we're suddenly offering three times as many events, and I think it's too much. I don't think there is that much disposable income in this community: You just can't expect the same people to go to 50 events in a year when they're used to going to 10 or 12.

"I think we're going to learn a lot about the community. I think there'll be a honeymoon; I'm not sure how passionate it's going to be. I'm a little bit nervous, I have to admit."

Lawhorne, the RiverCenter chairman, takes the long view when asked about Columbus' capacity to support the arts, especially for classical performers who sometimes struggle to draw a crowd in larger cities.

"Education, education, education," she said. "We have to raise up over the next two or three decades the awareness we'll need to support Jessye Norman performances and Richard Goode. We can't just open RiverCenter and say, okay, we're having Jessye Norman, we're having Midori, and get over it. We have to start in elementary schools with education in the arts."

IF YOU GO

GETTING THERE: Columbus is on the border with Alabama, in mid-Georgia. It is about 185 miles from Valdosta, which is on Interstate 75 just north of the Florida/Georgia border. Take 75 north and turn west on State Road 26. There is connecting air service from the Tampa Bay area.

STAYING THERE: About a dozen national chain motels and hotels have facilities in Columbus and there are a number of bed and breakfast inns. Consult the Columbus Convention & Visitors Bureau's Web site, www.visitcolumbusga.com, for details.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: For RiverCenter information, call (706) 653-7993 or see www.riverarts.net. For more on the city, call the Columbus Convention & Visitors Bureau toll-free 1-800-999-1613, or go to www.visitcolumbusga.com.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright