FARMINGTON – Have some artistic bones in your body and like the idea of planning how to spend $5 million of someone else’s money?

Then the University of Maine at Farmington may have a job for you.

On Monday, Mary Sylvester, UMF’s director of Development and Alumni Services Center, and college President, Theo Kalikow, are inviting community art lovers to a meeting to decide the future of a community arts center that will be part of UMF’s downtown footprint.

Although a brick hasn’t yet been laid for the arts space, $5 million has been anonymously donated for the cause, with the stipulation that the center be named the Emery Community Arts Center, in memory of Ted and Marguerite Emery, a former UMF professor and his wife who were major proponents of art and culture in the Farmington area.

Marguerite has now passed and Ted now lives in Arizona.

That $5 million has been sitting in the bank for a while and now UMF has decided it’s time to take the project from an abstract vision into an actual work of art.

Monday afternoon’s meeting is a way to glean community feedback, says Sylvester, who has been named development director for the ECAC recently. Although UMF is the beneficiary of the anonymous donation, Sylvester makes it clear that just because the college is holding the check, it doesn’t mean they are calling all the shots.

In the past, UMF has discovered its most successful projects are ones done in collaboration with the community, like the UMF Health and Fitness Center.

“As we work together to plan the next steps for the Emery Community Arts Center, we want to hear many voices,” she says of Monday’s meeting.

In total, it is estimated that the ECAC will cost upwards of $15 million to build, funds that in these slow economic times are unrealistic to try to raise. UMF is also currently raising funds for its new “green” education center, which the state approved money for in the education bond in November of 2001.

So Sylvester says, the purpose of the idea session is to walk away with a tangible idea for planning a first phase of construction.

Sylvester adds that some of the questions brainstormers will attempt to answer are: Would it be acceptable to build in stages? What would those stages be? What will be the annual cost to heat and light the facility, staff costs and other expenses? What will be the revenue source to support those costs?

Many community artists and art patrons have been invited by letter to the meeting, but Sylvester and Kalikow hope anyone with an interest and a vision will come.

For more information about the Emery Community Arts Center, contact Mary Sylvester at 778-7509.

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