And that’s a wrap.

Lewisville city officials June 15 shoveled sand at the formal groundbreaking of the Lewisville Center for the Creative Arts in OldTown, between Main and Charles streets.

Local actors, singers and dancers – young and old – performed at the ceremony.

The nearly $10 million project will give the city’s creative minds a 39,000 square-foot facility to call home, with two theaters, a dance recital hall, art gallery, five classrooms and a 15,000 square-foot courtyard for performances, activities in the summer, and the city’s fall concerts.

“It’s going to add growth tremendously, an enrichment and enhancement to all of us who like music and plays and art,” said Marjory Kent Vickery, who has been an active member of the Greater Lewisville Arts Alliance for more than 20 years. “There is a certain refinement that this performance arts center can provide that nothing else can.”

Joe Ann Brooks, artistic director for the Actor’s Conservatory Theatre, said members of the performing arts community, including the young actors in her children’s theater, haven’t really had a place to showcase their talent until now.

“This is fantastic,” she said. “It’s something we’ve been fighting for and working for – to get something for the cultural arts.”

And Gordon Roe, chair of the Greater Lewisville Arts Alliance, said the alliance decided just that – that it needed an arts center; but it wasn’t able to find a source of income.

That’s where the city came in.

Vickery said the city council has been a major support, and ultimately, found a way for the city to receive a grant to fund the project.

“We were thrilled, just thrilled,” Vickery said. “All of the sudden, we felt that the city had begun to understand the value of what the arts center could provide. When you have arts groups in a town, the quality of those people come up. Those kinds of people will gravitate to where those arts are provided.”

The city bought the center’s site in 2002. At the time, the land was the location of TempleBaptistChurch. The building was torn down five years later because it was no longer structurally sound, said James Kunke, the city’s community relations and tourism director.

That’s when the city recognized the opportunity for an arts center.

“The purpose is three-fold: to build up OldTown as a destination, to spur development in OldTown and to give the community access to the arts,” Kunke said.

The funding for the project is coming from the Old Town Tax Increment Finance District, with smaller sums coming from capital projects, corridor beautification and other funds, Kunke said. And revenue from the center will go right back into the facility, he added.

The project’s anticipated completion is August 2010.

Lindsey Bever is a reporter with neighborsgo and can be reached at 972-436-5551 ext. 3004 or via e-mail at lbever@neighborsgo.com. If you have a story, photo or video you'd like to share, please post it directly on neighborsgo.com.