Performing arts center signals Las Vegas ‘has grown up’

Onstage in that great big Vegas showroom in the sky, the spirit of Sinatra will be ring-a-ding-dinging as the city he helped turn into an entertainment mecca begins the leap to a new level in the performing arts.

Closer to the ground, Las Vegans will chime in as several events over the holiday weekend, centered around the creation of a commemorative bell, will climax with the long-awaited groundbreaking Tuesday for the Smith Center for the Performing Arts.

The cultural complex "is the most important building to be built in Nevada in our lifetime," said Donald Snyder, chairman of the Smith Center, in a statement about the nearly five-acre downtown project -- described as "a living room for the community" -- being constructed at the corner of Bonneville Avenue and Grand Central Parkway and expected to open in early 2012.

The $485 million center, which will rise from within the master-planned, 61-acre former Union Park, will become the permanent home of the Nevada Ballet Theatre and the Las Vegas Philharmonic. It will be anchored by a 2,050-seat main theater, an education building, a cabaret theater and additional space for children's theater and community events.

Ramping up to Tuesday's invitation-only groundbreaking ceremony are three public events this weekend as a carillon bell is cast on-site to mark the start of construction.

At 11:30 a.m. Sunday, children from across the valley are invited to help pass bronze ingots into a furnace, where they will be heated to 2,200 degrees. At 6:30 p.m. Sunday, onlookers can observe as molten metal is poured into a custom-inscripted mold, and at 10 a.m. Monday, after the bronze has cooled, the mold will be shattered to reveal the bell. The bell will be rung at Tuesday's 10 a.m. groundbreaking, where dignitaries expected to attend include Rep. Shelley Berkley, Mayor Oscar Goodman and members of the Las Vegas City Council, which earlier this month approved the necessary agreements for the project to go forward.

"The Smith Center is being built for people who live here, but the message to the world is that Las Vegas has grown up," Myron Martin, president of the center, told the Review-Journal last December. "Performing arts centers have proven they can change cities. We've reached critical mass in terms of population. Now we have to satisfy the population."

The center is named for Fred W. Smith, former Review-Journal executive and chairman of the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, and for his wife, Mary B. Smith. The foundation provided $150 million for the center's construction.

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.