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By ELIZABETH LEE BROWN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 15, 2007

Updated: 12/13/2007 07:11 pm

CARROLLWOOD - The curtain is up. The kilns are ready for firing. A growing list of classes and teachers is in the queue.

But the doors to the much-anticipated Carrollwood Cultural Center - a 25,000-square-foot building that will showcase community arts, music and theater - have yet to swing open.

As contractors wrap up the final list of construction items, Hillsborough County parks officials are negotiating who will get the building's keys.

County officials have been in talks with the nonprofit Friends of the Carrollwood Cultural Center to take over the center and annex the building's day-to-day management.

Staffing at the cultural center and its opening date have been in limbo since county commissioners eliminated the money to operate the annex and to fill some staff positions during budget cuts.

Under the preliminary deal, the county would pay the Friends group a management fee using money budgeted for the center's operational costs. The county would pay the utilities, and the Friends group would hire the staff and supplement the operating budget with class tuition fees.

Other potential revenue sources would be selling the naming rights to the rooms, the stage, park benches and brick pavers.

"They'll have more flexibility to be able to run the center," said John Brill, spokesman for the parks department. "We're a little more structured with what we can and can't do."

Brill said the Friends group would set the fee structure, but the county would have to approve it.

The tentative agreement could go before the county commission in January.

The parks, recreation, and conservation department has a similar agreement with the University Area Community Development Corporation to run the facility on North 22nd Street.

In January, Orlando-based CEM Enterprises began renovating the former St. Mark's Episcopal Church at Casey and Lowell roads in the heart of Carrollwood Village.

Despite being in the middle of Carrollwood, the center is expected to draw residents from across northwest Hillsborough. Classes in art, computers, crafts, music, photography, theater and languages would be open to county residents.

"Everyone is enthused to be as close as we are," said Tom Jones, president of the Friends group, who says 98 percent of the renovation work is complete.

The cultural center is a two-story building featuring a 616-square-foot stage and auditorium that seats up to 205 people.

"That's fine for a community theater. We're not competing with the performing arts center. This is strictly for community theater. If we can attract 200 people at a concert that will really be an accomplishment," Jones said.

The center has a room for arts and crafts classes, a ceramics room with 12 pottery wheels, a dance studio, a music room and a computer lab for digital photography.

The building also features a new balcony and lobby area. The church's former main entrance has been transformed into an outdoor stage, and the parking lot will be replaced with grass so patrons may sit on the lawn and listen to plays and concerts.

Adjacent to the main cultural center is a 6,000-square-foot annex building that was the former Church of Christ of Carrollwood. That building, also purchased by the county, has been used the past two years as a small venue for Sunday afternoon concerts while the main building was being renovated.

Arts leaders say the two buildings on 5 acres will complement each other. Once the center opens, the annex will hold jewelry-making classes and youth-oriented art programs.

Jones said it makes sense for the Friends group to take over the facility's management.

Their 15-member board would be more attuned to the community's daily needs and more flexible to tweaking things.

"It's best for the community," he said of the management. "We're here. We have our hearts in this thing. We have more flexibility of doing it. It gives us more flexibility in being more responsive to the community."

Jones said he has a stack of 18 resumes from accomplished professionals looking to be the center's executive director.

The cultural center has been a dream 10 years in the making.

The original idea was for a community center in Carrollwood Village. Once organizers landed the site and architects redesigned the building, leaders started seeing the center's potential, Jones said.

Soon the community center morphed into a regional cultural center that would be a centerpiece for community arts, theater and culture.

Although construction should wrap up by the end of January, the center won't officially open until March. The $8 million project covers the renovation and purchasing of the two buildings.

The extra time is needed to hire the staff, print the catalog of classes and line up teachers. Organizers have tentatively scheduled a grand opening March 2 featuring an inaugural concert by the Florida Orchestra.

Registration would start the following week, and classes would begin in mid-March, Jones said.

Mary Ann Scialdo, the center's artistic adviser, said she has more than 70 courses lined up.

Scialdo said she envisions a place where anyone in the community can come to learn a new skill and to discover what fine arts and performance arts are about.

There will be an opera company for kids, music theater, classes on theater voice, wellness classes in yoga and Aikido, beginning ballet for adults, maybe a course on playing chess or bridge, and many others.

"These are noninvasive," she said. "You don't have to do anything but walk in the door. It must reflect the community in which we live."

The tentative schedule is a little aggressive and hinges on the agreement's approval in January, Jones said.

"It's been a long time coming, but we're almost there, so that's the important thing," he said. "We get phone calls every day from people who want to teach or take classes."

Reporter Elizabeth Lee Brown can be reached at (813) 865-1502 or ebrown@tampatrib.com.

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