The closing on his dream property was supposed to occur Thursday at the bank branch down the road, but it was postponed.
That's the way things go with Ron Carter. He has an up-and-down relationship with dates.
The first "town hall" meeting to let local citizens know what Carter and his small band of fellow visionaries planned to do with Zelienople's old Strand Theater was scheduled for Sept. 11. The meeting was postponed.
Since that inauspicious debut, deadline after deadline has come and gone -- to raise donations, to arrange financing, to find a mortgage guarantor -- and deadlines that couldn't be met were miraculously extended.
But when a really big one rolled around on April 5, Carter managed to do what few humans could. He got a federal bureaucracy to cut through its own red tape. Apparatchiks in the U.S. Department of Agriculture -- "they were all very cooperative" -- responded to his daily faxes, worked with each other and put together a grant in two weeks that would normally require three to six months. They rescued Carter's dream.
Maybe that's what people do when moved by someone else's vision. That's hard for me to imagine because I've actually seen the Strand Theater.
The first couple of times I drove past the building on Zelie's Main Street, I thought -- how do I put this kindly? -- "My, what an unattractive structure." I still thought that last Tuesday after a tour of its interior.
That's not what Ron Carter sees. He's quick to praise all the other people involved in the effort to turn the Strand into a performing arts venue for the "culturally under-served" northern suburbs. Pivotal players ranging from bankers to bureaucrats have provided crucial help along the way.
"Stumbling blocks drive us forward." Carter's description of his yearlong experience as a community visionary sounds like the foundation for a lucrative career as a motivational speaker.
The process started when Carter spotted the theater's "crazy half moon doors" on the way to a child's soccer practice. "It's weird how music or shapes will stir your memory," he says. The brown doors' semicircular cutouts reminded him of a theater he used to see when visiting his grandmother's house in Beaver.
He's no slave to the warm fuzzy, however. Suggest that the Strand once again function as a movie theater, and he responds: "That's a nice sentiment, but there's a reason this place went out of business."
Perhaps through an arrangement with the Pittsburgh Filmmakers, Carter hopes someday to show art films as part of the Strand's offerings, but he wants the emphasis to be on the live performing arts, both theater and music. He hopes to book acts whose members will also give matinees or Q&A sessions for local students.
In towns like Zelie and Harmony, "historical tourism is already a staple of the local economy, so why not add cultural tourism? This could be a cornerstone to cultural growth," he says.
But that's a couple of million dollars down the road. These days, the dim light filtering through cracks in walls and doors reveals an old Big Wheel, parts of a vintage Mustang and tattered stage curtains among the theater's debris. Chains of faded red movie tickets -- admission, 20 cents -- litter the floor.
A small replica of the Strand's better days sits in a front window and is available for a $40 donation. A big sign in another window proclaimed for weeks that 260 seats remained for donors to claim -- at $200 each. The morning of my tour, it said 259, and Carter had an "8" ready to go since another donation had just come in the mail.
"They dribble in one by one."
He may even sell the vintage movie tickets as a fund-raiser, too. With extensive renovations and a huge backstage expansion as part of his dream, he has to raise money any way he can.
Timing has worked against him.
"Everyone had poured out their hearts and resources after September 11," he muses. "Attention was turned away from community concerns toward national concerns. Then the holiday season began... It made it difficult for us to do any meaningful fund-raising."
With $150,000 in loans and grants pieced together for Thursday's closing, Carter hopes people will now see the Strand's resurrection as a going concern, worthy of their support.
Although only 38, he spent enough years in corporate marketing to be tired of it and to desire "meaning or impact or a legacy of some kind." His belief, post-9/11: "If you can't save the world, you can make a small piece of it a better place."
Carter's vision will not only keep a worn-out building from becoming a parking lot, it may give those seeking the vision of the arts an unlikely place to find it, much closer to home.
Sunday, June 02, 2002
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