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St. Petersburg Arts Center To Get $1 Million Grant

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By CARLOS MONCADA | The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 10, 2008

ST. PETERSBURG - Cultural growth continues in St. Petersburg, as evidenced by today's announcement that the Arts Center is receiving a $1 million grant toward its redevelopment, which will include a museum of high-profile glass artist Dale Chihuly.

The donation from the Bank of America Charitable Foundation will help fund expansion of the 30,000-square foot Arts Center, at 719 Central Ave., to include space for the Chihuly collection, a glass-blowing shop and a children's learning center, officials said today during a reception at the site.

The expansion is slated to begin in September, with the Chihuly collection opening in early 2010.

The Arts Center joins several other cultural projects planned or under way in the downtown area, including an expansion of the Museum of Fine Arts and a new Salvador Dali Museum that will be built built next to the Mahaffey Theater on the waterfront by 2010.

"It's going to be the only major Chihuly collection in the world,'' Mayor Rick Baker said.

He compared its significance to the Dali Museum, which houses one of the world's most extensive collections of the Spanish surrealist and is the city's premier cultural attraction.

Plans for a Chihuly collection were announced in 2005 as part of a major residential and retail development called the Arts Village of St. Petersburg, which was scheduled to open this month.

The two-block project was to have included 500 condominium units and arts-themed retail. But Baker said the Arts Center decided to move forward while the residential component is reworked amid the housing slump.

"They wanted to get going,'' he said."They didn't want to wait and see what the residential market's going to do."

Reporter Carlos Moncada can be reached at cmoncada@tampatrib.com or (727) 451-2333.

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