The building is 'nearing completion' on Water Street, a new home for three Charlottesville not-for-profit arts organizations.

In a couple of weeks, Live Arts, the Second Street Gallery and the Light House will be moving in. Events are planned to generate buzz - everyone's still holding to Friday, October 31, for the kickoff.

The City Center for Contemporary Arts is the organization raising the money to build the building. Of the estimated $3.8 million construction cost, about $3.2 million is in hand, with the balance to be raised by the end of next January.

One fund raising activity that has drawn notice for its novelty is "Feed the Arts," a voluntary $1 added to each check in participating restaurants. According to Moira Crosby, spokes for the org, they should clear about $20,000 from this endeavor, with the added 'educational benefit' priceless. If you want to aid the effort and dine well at the same time, here's who's in it now: Station; Bang; Metro; Southern Culture; L'Étoile; Escafé; Fleurie and Oxo.

John Gibson, Artistic Director of Live Arts, waxes rhetorical - "Fastly, furiously, R.E. Lee is proceeding heroically" to finish the construction. "We had built in a couple of extra months in the construction time line, and it's a good thing we did.

Live Arts, which had threatened 36 hours of non-stop performance-related activity, now thinks they'll have activities that are "a little more community oriented," according to Gibson.

"We'll open on October 31, [but what the public will see will be] a little lean. You might call it elegant. You'll see some of the infrastructure." Hyperbole for 'walls not closed in,' but one can't blame him.

As for raising the required funds for completing the interior spaces and installing theatrical production equipment, Gibson is sanguine. "We'll do what we need to do with what we have in hand … about $285,000. We really don't want to be out right now competing with [C3A] for donations." He wants the public to know, however, that there is a list of in-kind needs - if you have something you think they can use, call Rob Petres at (434) 977 4177, extension 112.

With the inevitable construction delays (and a hurricane), the time line is tightening. Leah Stoddard, Director of the Second Street Gallery, has been told she has a 'move-in' date of October 15, and an 'occupancy' date of October 31. The first show in their new home will be quite ambitious, with 52 works coming in from all over the country, some of them quite large, according to Stoddard. The opening will be (First Friday) November 7, with a members' preview Thursday evening, so there will just be six days for them to install the entire show, in a space that does not yet quite exist.

Second Street has raised about $28,000 toward their cost for the new space (lighting, décor, security and a phone system), according to the director, and will need perhaps $30,000 more to complete the job. "And," she says, "of course we're all going after the same group of people for the money."

Will Kerner is Board Chair for the Light House. He's delighted to be moving into a new facility, but is not under the kind of pressure that faces Second Street and Live Arts - the program will continue up over Hamilton's until mid-December, and their (relatively modest) funding comes from a combination of grants, corporate sponsorships and student tuitions, supplemented by public donations.

November 8th is the date of Live Arts' big fund-raising gala ($200 a head): 'Amazing production values, world class entertainment and decadent indulgence swirl together in a night you'll never forget.'

Let us hope so. (Dave Sagarin, October 1, 2003)