FMU Performing Arts Center board tours construction site

FLORENCE — Members of the Francis Marion University Performing Arts Center governing board toured the center’s construction site Tuesday afternoon at West Palmetto and South Dargan streets and received updates on the progress of the building’s construction.

The center will serve as an instructional space for FMU’s fine arts programs and a venue for national traveling music, dance and theater productions. It also will serve as one of the “anchors” in downtown Florence intended to draw private business into the area.

The board met with Malcolm Holzman, the center’s architect, and received an update on the center’s progress before touring the grounds. The board looked at the future sites of the center’s lobby, sculpture garden and orchestra pit.

“I think we received a very good sense of the dimensions of the building. I got a sense of the size of the building when I looked at the orchestra pit,” FMU President Dr. Fred Carter said. “They appear to be making progress.”
Holzman, along with contractors from MB Kahn Coastal Division, answered board members’ questions about the center’s construction.

“All the foundations are going in the ground for the superstructure, but next month (Florence residents) will begin to see the steel rise for the building frame,” Holzman said. “By October, most of the steel frame will be up for the entire building and it’ll probably be completed by the first of the year and maybe by March or springtime, the skin of the building will be on, the majority of it. Then, the work will start on the inside.”

Laura Sims, managing director for the center, said Florence residents who want to keep abreast of updates related to the construction can join an e-mail club by e-mailing fmupac@fmarion.edu and asking for updates on the building.

“We’ll start posting (updates) about the middle of the summer,” Carter said.

The tour comes more than three months after the groundbreaking on the site in late January, which was the culmination of a process that began more than 10 years ago.

MB Kahn Coastal Division was selected as the contractor for the center’s construction by the governing board in November after its $27,722,218 bid was judged the lowest. The bid is less than the $30 million projected by the governing board before the bidding process for the construction contract.

With soft costs and such alternative projects as the sculpture garden and the amphitheater, the project cost will come to $32,881,000.

The base cost of the project is being paid for with money donated by the Drs. Bruce and Lee Foundation, the state of South Carolina and the city of Florence.

The alternative costs are being paid for by private donations, one of which was a $325,000 donation by BB&T in September toward the amphitheatre. Another gift was given earlier this month by Florence resident Adele Kassab toward the sculpture garden.

The center is set to be completed in fall 2010.

Carter said walking on the construction site was much different than seeing it from the street.

“When you get out here and walk across the site, you get a sense that it’s much larger than it looks when you’re on the adjacent streets,” he said. “I mean, this really is a large site and, as we know at this point, the building’s going to fill most of the site.”

— Staff writer Nick Hilbourn can be reached at (843) 317-7279.