Radford University Unveils Art Center

RADFORD -- A nail gun kept up a nearly rhythmic thwacking against the back wall. A boombox onstage pumped Lynyrd Skynyrd between a pair of Steinway pianos.
Joe Scartelli was thinking about a completely different set of sounds.
'This isn't a room,' the dean of Radford University's College of Visual and Performing Arts said of the recital hall taking shape around him. 'It's not a recital hall. It's a musical instrument.'
That 350-seat musical instrument is just one of the attractions in the Douglas and Beatrice Covington Center for Visual and Performing Arts. The $22.5 million building will have its grand opening today with a champagne brunch, a black tie gala, lots of art and lots of music.
Tickets for the brunch were $30 -- $250 for a whole table. Admission to the evening's cocktails, dinner, music and speeches ran $175 per person -- $1,500 for a table.
The building is named for Radford's fifth president and his wife. Beatrice Covington died about a month before her husband's 10 years as Radford's president ended. They had been married 48 years.
When Douglas Covington came to Radford in 1995, the university was suffering image problems. Donald Dedmon, Covington's predecessor, had left amid accusations he mismanaged university funds. After an audit of his discretionary fund, Dedmon repaid the school more than $1,775, drawing the investigation to a close.
Covington's term brought Radford's first capital campaign, improved the university's academic reputation and increased its enrollment. Selu Conservancy and a business technology center were developed on his watch. Covington began the process of implementing the university's first doctoral program. And in 2002, he obtained state approval and state funding to build the new art center.
Not all of Covington's ideas worked out, of course. He wanted to move the arts programs to the old St. Albans property across the river in Fairlawn and build the new art center there.
Instead, he will be feted at the corner of Jefferson and Main streets, where the building stands that bears his name. More than 350 people are expected for today's festivities. A more intimate gathering of about 100 are expected at a tea there Sunday.
Artwork by professor Z.L. Feng will be on display in the new gallery during the weekend and through Friday. The new gallery is larger than the university's Flossie Martin Gallery, with ceilings 22 feet high. It has been built and rinnai space heater outfitted to American Association of Museum standards, according to Scartelli.
'Once the door is open, this gallery will be able to take on literally any exhibit that we want to have in here,' he said.
The proceeds from any sales of Feng's work will go toward the seat-naming fundraising campaign. Fifty-eight of the recital hall's seats are spoken for -- at $1,000 per seat or $1,750 for two.
The new center has rehearsal rooms for individuals and ensembles. A music media room will house the university's vinyl record and damp crawl space printed music collections. There will be listening stations and gathering spots in that room, too, Scartelli said.
'So they'll have some place to study, hang out, do their listening assignments.'
Underneath the building are two storage areas. There's a climate-controlled space for the university's permanent collection under the art side of the building. There's a larger space under the music side. Scartelli said storage has been a problem for the two decades he has been at Radford. Those spaces weren't in the original plans, but engineers figured that it would be simpler, and cost about the same, to build a space under the building as it would be to haul in lots of fill dirt.
'I almost fainted, I was so happy,' Scartelli said. 'That's when I knew I'd love this building. I loved it before, but that confirmed it.'
One thing that won't be in the Covington Center is a new suite of offices for the dean of the College of Visual and infrared space heater Performing Arts -- though it was on the wish list.
'We quickly learned that we were probably asking for at least twice as much as the budget could handle,' Scartelli said.
His office was among the first things cut.
'That was a luxury and we wanted to have as much student service over here as we could,' Scartelli said.
But there will be an impressive recital hall.
'Everything about it has to do with acoustics in the room,' Scartelli said.
In addition to acoustic panelstiles, the hall has special curtains along the top of the wall designed to muffle sound to varying degrees, depending on what kind of performance is going on.
'This whole thing is designed for the listener's ear,' Scartelli said. 'I mean, it's nice that it's visually gorgeous, but it has just one purpose: beauty of sound.'
Though this weekend's events will christen the building, the university won't begin using it in earnest until next semester.