By Jeremy Stratton

Artspace Projects raised the curtain last week on a new design, by local architects Miller-Dunwiddie, for the Minnesota Shubert Performing Arts and Education Center.

The project will restore the Shubert Theatre and Hennepin Center for the Arts (built in 1910 and 1888, respectively) and link the two historic buildings with a newly constructed common atrium.

The center will focus on music, dance and education and will host the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and numerous other arts organizations.

Artspace hopes to open the facility by fall, 2008, said Kim Motes, the center’s director. Completion is contingent on further funding, however; Artspace has raised $13.5 million toward the $37 million project and has asked the State Legislature for $15 million in the 2006 bonding bill. The remainder will be raised in the private sector through an ongoing capital campaign, which Artspace also hopes to boost with the announcement that Blythe Brenden will chair the center’s Steering Committee. Brenden’s gradfather Ted Mann owned the Shubert from 1957 until 1983.

The new design reflects the sharpened vision of the center’s focus, Motes said, and it will keep the project on budget as construction costs continue to rise.

The Hennepin Avenue faŤade will feature angled glass framed by terracotta to match the Shubert’s exterior. The theater’s marquee — 5 feet high and 33 feet long — will hold two LED video screens, and a two-story tower above could be lit up or project images.

The added atrium will feature a lobby, 300-seat formal dining room and a glass-walled classroom or studio space, visible from the first and third floors. From the classroom, the Shubert Center will continue its arts education and technology program, which for the past three years has taught arts programming to school children in Greater Minnesota via Internet and video technology.

In 1999, the Shubert Theater was physically moved from the corner of South 7th Street & 1st Avenue North — where the hard Rock Caf/ now stands in Block E — to its current location on the 500 block of Hennepin Avenue Fundraising started then, said Motes, with money coming from the city and private donors.

In 2005, the city put the Shubert on top of its list of bonding priorities. Last year’s bonding bill included $1 million for planning, which Artspace used to hire Miller-Dunwiddie. The Minneapolis-based firm’s designs include Artspace’s award-winning restoration of St. Paul’s Tilsner Warehouse in 1993, as well as historic restoration of the Basilica of St. Mary, St. Paul Cathedral and Minnesota State Capitol.

Motes hopes that an additional $15 million from the state will spur private lenders to make up the remaining $8.5 million.

“The goal is that, once we know the legislative answer, we hope to finish the campaign fairly quickly,” she said.

That outcome won’t be known, however, until after the curtain falls on the legislature’s own song and dance this session.