Culture worthy of your calendar

After 20 years of dedicated work and fundraising by hundreds of arts lovers who have long realized that Orlando needs and deserves a “world-class” performing arts center, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer announced on May 18 that the funding is now in place to break ground on the new center. It was the happiest press conference this writer has ever attended. The Orlando City Council approved the project’s first phase on Monday.

On May 18, surrounded by supportive City Council members (past and present) and a host of donors, Mayor Dyer said, “They have raised more money for this project than any single project in the history of our city. We are going to be able to break ground because of their efforts.”

Citing the fact that visitor hotel taxes — long counted on to pay for a significant part of the new center — have increased dramatically over the past three months, Mayor Dyer also explained a “fail-safe provision” in which arts center donors have signed letters of credit to guarantee a funding gap, should those hotel taxes go through another downturn. But philanthropist Jim Pugh, who has headed up the multi-million dollar fundraising for the center, was confident that the taxes will be there and the city will not need the line of credit.

Anyone who has ever attended an event at the Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre must realize that Orlando may finally lift its head and claim our rightful place among cities that “care about the arts.” And after witnessing the tours and artists who have made the new Amway Center such an immediate success, we need to embrace the idea that “if we build it, they will come.” The new Amway Center could not be a more obvious success metaphor.

The “delay” in the new arts center was caused by the recent recession in which tourism tax dollars faltered. Those tax dollars were originally counted on to pay for about one-third of the cost of the center. The good news about Orlando’s “tourism recovery” has everyone involved in the new center “hopin’ and wishin’ and dreamin’ and prayin’” that $43 million in hotel tax dollars will be available for the new center over the next four years. But with the “line of credit” from the board of the new center, even if hotel taxes were to falter, Orlando now has “Plan B” — a $16 million line of credit in place to assure the building of the new center. That plan includes building two of the three performance halls from the original design. Board members for the new center said that fundraising for the third hall would begin immediately.

The location of the press conference was significant as well: the city of Orlando’s Blueprint Employment Office. Commissioner Daisy Lynum emphasized the importance of jobs brought to the city through the creation of the new center. Mayor Dyer announced that the project would bring more than 3,000 new jobs to the city, and Lynum, who was instrumental in assuring that construction jobs for the unemployed, minorities and women received serious consideration during the construction of the Amway Center, will be doing the same for the new Performing Arts Center. Everyone at the press conference was smiling in ways seldom seen over the last three years, but Daisy Lynum had one of the broadest smiles as she said, “Jobs, jobs, jobs,” and then smiled some more.

Special congratulations to Mayor Buddy Dyer and Jim Pugh, whose vision, leadership and unflagging hope will make one more “magical” dream come true in Orlando.