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Arts Center, condos split

The museum will redesign and enlarge its current space.

By LENNIE BENNETT, Times Staff Writer
Published January 11, 2008

Art Center officials have scrapped plans to partner with a condo project across the street. The redesigned project will reconfigure the footprint at its current site and add another 20,000 square feet.
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ST. PETERSBURG - The Arts Center could have been a victim of the real estate crisis. Instead, it's looking like a survivor.

The 90-year-old organization's leaders announced Thursday they have severed ties with the Arts, a planned two-tower condominium high-rise that touted as its centerpiece the grand 62,000-square foot Arts Center and museum devoted to the works of glass sculptor Dale Chihuly. The project is still going forward, but groundbreaking has been delayed due to slow sales.

There will still be a new Arts Center,but it will be built in stages, added to its current building at Central Avenue and Eighth Street, board chairman Terry Brett said at a news conference Thursday.

It will be smaller, said Evelyn Craft, the center's executive director. But it will still have the Chihuly museum, the only one in the world devoted to the Seattle artist widely credited with creating the modern art-glass movement. The Arts Center will remain open for business during construction, Craft said.

"We have a signed contract with the Chihuly organization," Brett said, "for a $6-million collection that will be owned and controlled by the Arts Center."

A $1-million gift from the Bank of America Charitable Foundation also was announced Thursday. It is the largest amount ever given to a Pinellas County organization by the bank, said Bernie Craig, Bank of America's Pinellas County president.

For almost four years, the Arts Center has linked its growth to the Arts, a condo project, a block west of the center's current site, that was expected to open in 2008.

The center, which serves more than 100,000 adults and children annually through educational programs and art exhibitions, would have occupied a historic bank on the property with new wings totaling about 62,000 square feet. Its star component was to be the Chihuly Collection, the first museum devoted to the monumental glass sculptures that have made Chihuly one of the most famous artists in the world.

Craft said that the slow real estate market was holding up construction.

"Now we can control the schedule," she said. "The longer we went without progress, the more our supporters doubted the expansion would happen."

The center regrouped, coming up with an alternative that will enlarge and reconfigure the current footprint, adding about 20,000 square feet for a total of 50,000 square feet. It will include the Chihuly Collection; the Bank of America Children's Learning Center; more gallery space for exhibitions; and a glass-blowing "hot shop" that will function as a studio for glass artists and a viewing center for visitors.

The redesign, Craft said, "will cost about $10-million," half of what was projected for the original proposal. With the $1-million gift and an earlier, $8-million gift from philanthropist Beth Morean, Brett said construction will begin in September with a completion date in 2010.

Yaron David, managing director for the Arts project, said, "We very much courted the Arts Center, though it was always a separate development, not part of ours.

"We were giving them a piece of land to build on. We always wanted to be adjacent to the Arts Center.

"Now we still are, we'll just be separated by a crosswalk instead of a wall. And we didn't have to give away any land."

He said he is hopeful that construction can begin on the 292-unit north tower this year, but it is contingent on sales. About 30 percent of the units have been sold; the industry standard is that projects go forward when half the units are sold.

The Tampa Bay Business Journal reported in late 2007 that existing condominium sales had fallen 20 percent in the Tampa Bay area. The Arts is one of about 11 projects in development in downtown St. Petersburg; most of those have not yet broken ground.

The Arts Center project was affected by more than the real estate market. Like all not-for-profits, its fundraising efforts have been hampered by the overall economic slowdown. Craft said that she and her board decided the new plan was more realistic and allowed them to commit to a specific groundbreaking.

Times researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this report. Lennie Bennett can be reached at lennie@sptimes.com or 727 893-8293.

[Last modified January 11, 2008, 00:43:23]