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UA Poetry Center's new facility to be privately funded

After more than 10 years in cramped quarters originally meant to be a temporary holdover, the UA Poetry Center is now hoping to raise $4 million to finance a new, larger facility.

The Center houses approximately 30,000 volumes and other media in two adobe structures on North Cherry Avenue. Despite this, the facilities are no longer able to meet its growing needs.

The Center has turned to its new director, Jim Paul, whose background in the non-profit arts world arms him with the fundraising expertise needed.

"(Fundraising) is about getting your message out," said Paul. "We're in a tremendously rich time and it's time to spend money on cultural resources. It's the harvest time for money for cultural resources, and I am going to go out with my sickle."

Pending Arizona Board of Regents approval, the $4 million needed will pay for a proposed 11,455 square-foot structure located on the southwest corner of North Santa Rita Avenue and East Mabel Street - to be operational in 2004.

Paul's fundraising strategy is mainly composed of lunches and benefits and even a possible rock 'n' roll benefit in the fall.

He has organized a fundraiser in Seattle scheduled for March 22, and ones in Los Angeles and Santa Fe later this year.

Paul said he is looking to incorporate donations from wealthy benefactors in addition to smaller donations from those who appreciate the Center's contribution to the university.

The Center acquires about 1,700 works annually, and currently a third of the collection remains in storage.

The initial 1960 endowment by writer/founder Ruth Stephan requires that the grant annually be used for the acquisition of new works for the collection.

As a result of these terms, the UA Poetry Center has become what director Paul calls, "the best contemporary poetry collection in the country."

Paul said that a collection of this magnitude could not be sufficiently housed without a new facility.

"We have the opportunity to be a literary center for the nation," he said.

To maintain that status, Paul said the Center must expand.

The Center is a "world-class resource" that must suffice with "temporary facilities," Paul said. "I don't think people know what they have here."

Others involved with the Center agree that it is an important asset to the university.

"We (the Center) bring distinction to the institution, help attract distinguished faculty and students to UA, put the University on the national literary map and enrich the artistic and intellectual climate of the community," stated Alison Deming, former Poetry Center director, in an e-mail interview.

Deming stated that she understands the need for more space and believes the Center will suffer without it.

"The Center cannot continue in the current site because the buildings are rundown and too small to serve our needs," Deming stated. "One-third of the collection is kept in offsite (sic) storage. Archival preservation is compromised at the current site. Inadequate space is available for groups - whether for educational tours, lectures, writing groups and seminars, and readings."

The Poetry Center was supposed to receive a new facility in 1989 in conjunction with a newly proposed Humanities building, but late-80s recession caused the Arizona Board of Regents to hold off on the project indefinitely.

"When that project hit the skids in the mid-90s, it became clear that the most likely way we would have a new and much needed facility was by separating our project as one independent from the College's other facility needs and by going for gift funding," Deming stated.

Deming, associate Creative Writing professor, said that while the intellectual and creative interaction between the university and the Center has remained productive, financially the Center has grown increasingly reliant on private donations - especially for its new facility.

"I think the University should provide more support, and we have that support within the department and the (College of Humanities), " Deming said. "We have very gradually built up our staff during the past ten years, so that we now have a very professional team in place, thanks to University support. But I do not think that the University's original commitment to support the Center's operations has been realized."

The Center currently receives limited monetary support from the university in the form of staff salaries, operating and maintenance costs, and the cost of storage.

Dennis Evans, College of Humanities associate dean for external affairs, said the university has fulfilled the terms of the agreement.

"The university has lived up to its end of the bargain in the relationship (with the Center) according to the original commitment," said Dennis Evans, the Associate Dean for External Affairs of the College of Humanities.

Deming disagreed, stating "the disposition of real estate donated to the Center in the 1960s that has been subsumed by the campus without compensation to the Center."

Evans said the search for funds through philanthropic means represents a growing trend of universities' increasing reliance on private funding - more than the revenue-bonding of the 1980s.

"There are an increasing number of university buildings that are privately funded," Evans said.

ABOR member Jack Jewitt, while not familiar with the proposed facility, said he was not surprised that the Center would have to rely on philanthropic donations, as opposed to ABOR funding.

"There is a prioritization process with finite resources. Even in good times a lot of meritous (sic) projects don't get funded," he said. "Money to higher education is being reduced on a constant downward trend so universities are more reliant on philanthropy."

Deming summed up the issue by observing both the Center's prominence and the university's responsibility to it.

"If the Center is to keep its place of the national distinction and to take the necessary steps in its growth, the University's (sic) commitment will need to grow as well," Deming stated.