FSCC continues capital campaign for fine arts center

About $2 million in funding is still needed before construction can begin on the new fine arts center planned for Fort Scott Community College, FSCC officials said.

Nearly $5 million of the almost $7 million in total funding needed to build the new fine arts center has been collected in pledged gifts and donations, officials said. The site for the center is located just east of the current FSCC Administration building on the main campus, overlooking the south side of the lake and the Fort Lincoln School walking trail at the campus' northeast corner.

The new center will add more classroom and instructional space for music, speech, theater, art and band programs at FSCC, and will also contain a 600-seat auditorium. There has never been a theater or an auditorium on the college campus in its nearly 90-year history, FSCC spokeswoman Jill Warford said.

Warford, a member of the association's capital campaign committee, is also the director of the Gordon Parks Center for Culture and Diversity, which is currently housed in minimal space inside the FSCC library. The new Gordon Parks center will feature about 3,000-square feet of space to display the famed Fort Scott native's music, literature, film, photography, poetry and other works.

The new Gordon Parks center will host speakers and scholars on related educational and inspirational subjects that defined who Parks was as a person. Along with his collection of works to be displayed are several of Parks' personal belongings from his apartment in New York, where he died in March at the age of 93. Among those belongings is an old antique desk that the center recently received in which Parks worked at in his home and wrote many of his famous literary works, Warford said.

The idea for the proposed new facility -- the first new academic building on the FSCC campus in nearly 20 years -- began about five years ago when the FSCC Endowment Association conducted a community survey in Fort Scott to gauge interest from the public on new building projects at the college, Warford said.

The results of the community survey indicated that local taxpayers were interested in either a new fine arts center or an agricultural center on the college campus, Warford said. A majority of the FSCC Endowment Association's major donors said they would contribute money and support to a new fine arts center first, she said.

FSCC officials are continuing their capital campaign to raise the additional $2 million before construction of the new fine arts center begins in late 2007. FSCC is working with an Arkansas-based construction firm to develop new construction plans and costs for the planned 33,000-square foot facility. The Gordon Parks center is currently in the middle of a five-year plan that funds activities at the center, officials said.

Increased construction costs have recently caused college officials to redraw plans for the exterior of the building in an effort to save money, officials said. The building will take about 18 months to build after construction plans have been finalized, FSCC President Jim Miesner said. Interior specifications and other aspects of the facility will remain the same, FSCC Business Development Director Daryl Roller said.

Roller is also on the project's capital campaign committee.

More than 1,700 FSCC students each year would complete classes in the new fine arts center, which college officials said could also be used for other classes, as well as student and community activities.

The annual Gordon Parks Celebration of Culture and Diversity will be a mainstay at the new fine arts center. The four-day event, conducted in October each year, features film screenings, presentations, panel discussions, guest speakers, workshops, and other activities designed to honor Parks' legend. That event typically draws about 2,000 people each year.

The new fine arts center will also contain gallery space, art studios, classrooms, music rehearsal space, an indoor and outdoor exhibition space, a 3,000-square foot gallery and exhibition hall, an atrium, three music classrooms, three fine arts classrooms, one ceramics studio and one painting studio.

The facility could also host historical and cultural events in the area, FSCC officials said.