BY RAY SCHAEFER
Enquirer Contributor
COVINGTON
-- For 94 years, the Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center and the theater behind it have been separate.
This past week, center officials took the first steps toward connecting the structures at the corner of Robbins Street and Scott Boulevard.
They are applying for a $461,000 federal transportation enhancement grant to help pay for a nearly $1 million project that would connect the two and make them handicap-accessible. The center is eligible for transportation funds because it is along a major thoroughfare, Scott Boulevard.
They are trying to figure out how to raise an additional $2 million to renovate the theater and parts of the main gallery.
Executive Director Neal Hudson said an alley on the south side of the main gallery would be enclosed.
"In the (connection) plan there is a stairway and an elevator," Mr. Hudson said. "(With) all this, you would consider it a lobby when it was finished.
"We're doing a feasibility study to see what it would cost to renovate the theater."
He didn't know when construction or renovations would start. Gene Archbold, chairman of the center's building
committee, asked Kenton County Fiscal Court last week to sponsor the grant application -- a move county commissioners approved -- but he did not ask the county for money.
Mr. Archbold said the center already has a $338,000 grant it received in 1996 but never spent and about $115,000 in matching funds from other sources.
"This is not a guise to come back (to the county) and ask for the matching funds," Mr. Archbold said.
He said he should know by March whether the grant is approved. The buildings were completed in 1904. The main building was home to the Covington Library until 1967 and the Kenton County Public Library until 1974, when the city took it over. The Carnegie Center leases the main building -- which houses an art gallery -- and the theater from the city for $1 a year.
Mr. Hudson said the theater seats about 450 and is used for community plays and concerts.
"Over the main body of the theater is a dome," Mr. Hudson said. "There were decorative lights in a circle near the top of the dome. The dome was stenciled and painted." Officials would like to restore it to its original condition.
Mr. Archbold said there is no air conditioning in the theater and the main building, except for a corner gallery and Mr. Hudson's office, and there are no restrooms in the theater.
"They had a wooden privy in between the two," Mr. Archbold said.
Besides the air conditioning and restrooms, Mr. Archbold said the $2 million renovation includes painting and plastering throughout the gallery.
"What we'll be able to do is have more people," he said.
