Wynton M. Blount Cultural Park Expansion Unveiled
MONTGOMERY, AL., April 5, 1999–A major expansion of the Wynton M. Blount Cultural Park in Montgomery was today unveiled by park, state, city and county officials and members of industrialist Winton M. Blount's family.
One of the largest cultural parks in America, the 300 acre park will soon include new entertainment venues, a new roadway system, a new entrance and house the location of new, expanded and future attractions and other cultural activities which will join attractions already in the park.
A 250 seat amphitheater and Shakespeare Garden will open in June. Phase One Expansion construction, which began this month, will include a new entrance, new roads, bridge, a new lake and fourth entertainment venue, and extensive landscaping. Once the two miles of new roads are in, construction will start on an English style village, which will include a Cotswold cottage, a large English barn, an English pub/restaurant, gift shop, garden center, park administrative offices, an information center, and rooms for social gatherings as well as other buildings. Long-range plans to include Wynfield, the private home of Red and Carolyn Blount, as a house museum which will be opened into the park for tours were also unveiled. Also announced at a news conference for the expansion were construction of a private chapel and gardens, a large conservatory, horticultural facility, other gardens and support buildings on the Wynfield property, which will eventually be opened to the public. Land on the Cultural Park's master plan is also being reserved for other arts groups which may want to locate within the park.
Already located in the Blount Cultural Park are the Carolyn Blount Theatre, home of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, which together attracted over a half million visitors last year. Primary Park benefactor Red Blount said he and his children, who are also contributing to the current expansion, can envision more than a million people annually visiting the cultural park in new millennium after construction is complete.
The park master plan was developed by Tom Blount, now working in Beverly Hills, Calif, working with Montgomery architect Robert Frank McAlpine and Landscape architect Edwina VonGal, of New York. Taylor Dawson, of Andrew & Dawson, Montgomery, is serving as general contractor and construction manager. Engineering is being handled by Goodwyn Mills & Cawood.
About two dozen local citizens have served on a cultural park planning board, chaired by Taylor Dawson, to put the Blount's vision into place. Planning for the expansion began in mid 1997.
BLOUNT FAMILY REVEALS PLANS FOR CULTURAL PARK EXPANSION
Fields of Dreams
MONTGOMERY, AL, April 5, 1999 – A dream that began with the idea of relocating a nearly bankrupt theatre company to a permanent facility in a field in an industrialist's "back yard" has resulted in a cultural park in Alabama's Capital City, Montgomery, that rivals any in the world.
At first, local residents couldn't image the dream Winton M. "Red" and his wife, Carolyn, Blount had in 1983 for relocating the Alabama Shakespeare Festival to a state-of-the-art theatre facility which became the largest single private gift to the arts in the nation. But build it and they will come, dreamed the Blounts, whose company tackled some of the most ambitious projects and products in the world. Now in its 14th year in Montgomery, over 500,000 people annually attend performances at the two theatre facility, one of the top five Shakespeare festivals in the world, and at events and exhibits at the neighboring Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, also built in the park that is on the Blount property.
The Blounts kept dreaming, and soon the theatre project grew to become a full cultural park. Mr. Blount's career as a major industrialist began after he and his brother, Houston, returned from World War II to form a construction company (Blount Brothers Construction) that grew to produce billions in annual sales. The first two lakes on the now 300 acre property quickly became venues for outdoor symphony and dance performances, and weekend entertainment events like Scottish, English Renaissance, African Heritage and other cultural arts festivals in the park, each attended by tens of thousands.
Then came the idea of a permanent outdoor amphitheatre and a Shakespeare garden to augment the beautifully landscaped grounds filled with flowers and trees. That latest outdoor theatre facility surrounded by traditional thatched roof structures will formally open in June 1999.
The Blounts decided they wanted to continue building their dreams. Gradually they gave more and more of their estate to the park authority, and the institutions located there under private/public partnerships entered into by the Blount family, with the city, county, and state. The Blount's subsequently bought adjacent land. Now, another multi-million contribution means construction has started on a new park entrance, nearly two miles of new park roads, a bridge, additional parking, and another terraced lake, which will contain a fourth venue for outdoor performances. After that phase is completed in the Spring of 2000, the Blounts plan to add an English style village, complete with a Cotswold cottage, which will house gift shops, an English pub/restaurant, and other structures, which will include offices and meeting rooms for local arts groups, and an array of facilities to accommodate the more than one million visitors expected in the expanded park annually.
The Blount's dreams still aren't finished. On Wynfield, the family home and grounds located on 29 acres in the center of the Cultural Park, landscapers and contractors are also busy at work. Rose and azalea gardens and crepe myrtles are in their growing stages. A vast conservatory, with a full service catering kitchen, is being built to host 300 for indoor receptions and 100 for seated dinner functions amidst new gardens adjacent the Blount's Georgian-style home, which was originally built in 1965. Surrounding the house are dozens of tall trees filled with thousands of tiny gold lights, which residents fondly refer to when they are lit on special occasions as the "enchanted forest."
Recently completed on the Wynfield grounds are a small private meditation chapel and garden. On the drawing boards are plans for a full horticultural facility, a new barn to house the array of Scottish sheep and horses which roam the pastures of Wynfield. Eventually, the Blounts plan to make the Wynfield house and grounds available as a museum for tours of the home's exquisite collections of paintings, antiques and art treasures.
Elsewhere in the Blount Cultural Park, space has been reserved for a new performing arts center, should the community wish to build one, and for other theatres and facilities should various arts boards wish to pursue adding them to existing cultural institutions already there or who would like to be in the park. "There's plenty of land," says Blount. "Who knows what someone else will dream of next?
"Our dream now is to create a unique place that people can visit, see, and study the arts and culture that have shaped the millennium. We want to create a year-round place to cultivate a love of beauty, a paradise with sculpture, trees, lakes and flowers. We envison a place of information and inspiration available to the community for leisure, cultural and educational activities. We're thrilled that 'Shakespeare in Love' was voted Best Film by the Academy Awards. Shakespeare is, as he has been for nearly 500 years, an inspiration for the society and culture of all nations.
"Coupled with the Montgomery Museum's fine collections of American and European art, its series of noted lectures, it's chamber music performances, and the vast array of other American arts resources found there, including sculptures and fountains now or later to be located on the property, we believe we've started something really great that people worldwide will want to come and share in the next millennium. It's not what you'd expect to find in this historic southern city." The current phase of the Cultural Park expansion is being funded by the Blount family.
Other facilities, arts institutions which are housed in or use the park, and over 500 public events held in the park annually are funded by private and public partnerships by area businesses, the city, county, and state. The park triggered a cultural renaissance in Montgomery, now a metro area of 319,000.
In 1984 the greatest number of tickets for arts events ever sold locally was 1,500 seats for a national touring company which performed in a local high school auditorium. Today, Montgomery boasts several professional and amateur theatre companies, and still hosts touring companies. An outstanding community symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, and world-class performance series, professional dance companies, numerous galleries, art museums, international exhibits, lecture series, and public schools for the arts for students from kindergarten to the post-graduate level are now offered.
Changing from annual arts expenditures 20 years ago of only a few hundred thousand dollars, today the arts have a $50 million economic impact in Montgomery. The city's love for the arts attracts actors, musicians, dancers, artists–both professional and amateur, and instructors from around the nation and world, who participate in and see more than five hundred annual performances, many reaching sold out crowds and running for months. More than 31,000 tickets were sold for one festival theatrical production run last year. Attendees come from all 50 states and more than 60 foreign countries.
People, ranging from students to retirees, traveling from California to the Carolinas, and from Canada to Mexico, come by the bus and car loads to attend cultural events. The park has fueled the development of nearby hotels and restaurants for people who make a week or weekend of repertory theatre, arts events and historical attractions in the city. It is now common to see people of all economic situations sitting beside noted movie and theatre actors or executives enjoying a live theatrical performance or listening to musicians who rush to Beijing and back for a local performance in one of the venues in the Cultural Park on their way to a competition in Moscow or Salzburg. On some weeks in Montgomery now, one could see and hear several rising musicians who have played Carnegie Hall and actors who have been on stages on Broadway or in Hollywood in addition to many local performers.
"For this remarkable family, which has left its signature and name on monumental building projects and products around the globe in the twentieth century, their dreams for this grand cultural park in the twenty-first century have just begun," said cultural park chairman Joe McInnes.
