Donation tops off arts center project

About 150 people wearing hard hats toasted champagne on Thursday afternoon to celebrate the “topping off” of Colorado College’s Cornerstone Arts Center.

The symbolic event — which marks the completion of a building’s exterior superstructure — was made even more festive by the announcement of a $2.5 million donation to the center.

“I hope and expect that this building will become an enormous asset, not just for Colorado College, but for the community,” said college President Richard Celeste.

The multiangled building, designed by internationally renowned architect Antoine Predock, is under construction at Cascade Avenue and Cache La Poudre Street. It will house classrooms and performing arts spaces for the college’s art, dance, drama, film and music departments.

A tour of the uncompleted building on Thursday revealed few actual hallways and wideopen spaces that can be adaptable to many uses.

“This building is like a huge Transformer toy,” Predock said at the ceremony. “Now, it’s up to you to mess with it.”

The three-story, 73,300-square-foot building will include a 451-seat auditorium, a 92-seat black box performance venue, a sound stage, a 106-seat film screening room, the Inter-Disciplinary Experimental Arts Space, to be known as the I.D.E.A. space, and a multipurpose Flex Room, which can be used as a teaching or performing space. The projected cost is $33 million.

The $2.5 million gift is specifically targeted to the I.D.E.A. space, a place where the curator Jessica Hunter Larsen and various artists will expand the boundaries of various media.

It’s the gift of siblings Susan Hoke Smith and William S. Smith, who graduated from the college in 1977 and 1974, respectively.

“Both my brother and I feel very fortunate to be in a position to do this,” Hoke Smith said. “I’m glad we can give back to a school that gave so much to us.”

Groundbreaking for Cornerstone was in May 2006, and it’s scheduled to be complete in March 2008. The official grand opening, however, won’t be until October 2008.

Officially, Cornerstone will be Predock’s second local building. The New-Mexico-based architect — known for such creations as the Nelson Fine Arts Center at Arizona State University and Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres — also designed Discovery Canyon Campus, the newly opened $72 million prekindergarten through 12th grade campus in Academy School District 20.

But Predock said only Cornerstone truly represents his vision.