An artist’s rendering of the 14,000-square-feet Johnson C. Smith University Visual and Performing Arts Curriculum and Instructional Facility on West Trade Street, which is set to open in spring 2010.

Johnson C. Smith University today formally unveiled plans for a new Visual and Performing Arts Curriculum and Instructional Facility on West Trade Street – the school’s first leap beyond its Beatties Ford Road campus.

The center will be housed in a renovated, 14,000-square-feet building that was the original home of Griffin Brothers Tire Co. The facility is set to open in spring 2010.

The new arts building, announced last week on Qcitymetro.com, will be mainly a teaching facility to support the university’s new Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) major, officials said today. The new major will have concentrations in theatre, film, studio art, graphic art and dance.

Along with the official groundbreaking, the Wells Fargo Foundation today gave $500,000 to the United Negro College Fund to support JCSU’s efforts to rejuvenate the Historic WestEnd Corridor (photo below).

The arts center project will include a black box theatre; art studios for drawing, painting and clay sculpting; a Mac computer lab for graphics; a darkroom for photography; a dance studio and an area for video production.

JCSU President Ronald Carter has made expansion beyond the school’s main campus a focal point for his nearly two-year-old administration. He also has been pushing city officials for esthetic improvements that would beautify the area and link it visually with the Gateway Village area just across Interstate 77.

Carter said the arts center is just the beginning of the university’s vision for the WestEnd Corridor, and he thanked the many city officials who worked with the school to make it happen.

“This is what happens when we start focusing on the fact that we can trust, we can walk together, work together, when we don’t allow the negativities of the past to infester our dreams of today,” he said.

Thursday’s unveiling was attended by a host of county and city officials, including Mayor Anthony Foxx, who recalled his grandfather bringing his car to the old Griffin building for service.

“The transformation... that Johnson C. Smith is making by being a catalyst in this corridor is nothing short of amazing,” he told the audience.

But as the city looks at ongoing efforts to revitalize that part of town, he said, leaders also must take stock of the “psychological walls” that often divide one part of Charlotte from another.

“I can tell you that as mayor of this city, I will never accept there being walls in the community,” Foxx said. “We can pull the walls that exist down. We can connect this community. We can make Charlotte what it ought to be, and we’ll do it.”

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Photo below: Jay Everette (left) a senior vice president at Wachovia, presents a $500,000 check to the United Negro College Fund to support Johnson C. Smith University's efforts to revitalize Charlotte's WestEnd Corridor. Accepting for the school is university president Ronald Carter (center). (Photo: Qcitymetro.com)

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