An official groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. today in the Fine Arts Quadrangle at entrance 16 off Cullen Boulevard. The center, which will be housed in the Wortham Theater Complex, will include exterior and interior work to enhance the lobby space of the existing facility, provide office area for the Mitchell Center and add new rehearsal space.
"It will be a nice addition to the campus," says John Dennis, project manager for Dallas-based Cadence McShane Corp., which is in charge of the expansion and renovation. San Antonio, TX-based Lake/Flato Architects Inc. is providing architectural servicesfor the center's demolition, renovation and construction.
Dennis tells GlobeSt.com that the project will take about nine months to finish and will require 35 to 50 construction professionals to complete. Cadence McShane will initially demolish the interior of the existing performing arts center and reconstruct 15,000 sf on two floors. The area will house classrooms plus ballet practice and rehearsal rooms.
"There's a lot of wood paneling, acoustical plasters, stainless steel window frames, metal panels and cut stone," Dennis describes. "[The renovations] really complement the existing building."
While the theater itself will retain the name Lyndall Finley Wortham Theatre, the building as a whole will be renamed to the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts. The project was funded primarily by a $20-million gift from George and Cynthia Mitchell, along with a grant from the Wortham Foundation and Allen Becker.
The center will create a collaborative alliance of the university's premier academic and arts departments in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. The alliance weds the art department, Blaffer Gallery, creative writing program, Moores School of Music and the theater school.
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