Mural Project Loses Funding - DDA To Use Grant For Downtown Performing Arts Groups

Mural project loses funding<br><br>DDA to use grant for downtown performing arts groups<br><br>BY DAVE GERSHMAN<br><br>The Ann Arbor News<br><br>A proposal to paint a seven-story mural on the side of a downtown parking structure is on hold after it lost out on its principal source of funding.<br><br>The Downtown Development Authority will use the $50,000 grant to provide additional funding for downtown performing arts groups instead, DDA member Sandi Smith announced at Wednesday’s monthly meeting.<br><br>But there could be an op-<br><br>portunity for the DDA to fund the mural in the future, she said.<br><br>“I wouldn’t say that it means it’s dead in the water,” said Smith after the meeting.<br><br>A group called Fire Up Downtown wanted to use the money to paint a mural called “A Blueprint for a New Tomorrow” on the elevator shaft of the parking structure at Fourth and William streets, overlooking Main Street. The mural, designed by artist Mary Thiefels of Tree Town Murals, would depict a young woman painting a scene of<br><br>a future Main Street, where buildings are slightly more dense and the street is filled by bicyclists and a trolley.<br><br>Losing out on the money, said Bob Dascola, one of the principals of Fire Up Downtown, “completely refigures when we’re going to be able to do the project.”<br><br>The grant money would have covered the entire cost of the project, which was planned to be unveiled in summer 2010 at the earliest. The group is exploring other funding sources, said Dascola.<br><br>The project is ready to go, said Ellie Serras, the other principal of Fire Up Downtown.<br><br>“Nobody seems to know exactly what procedure they want to follow, so we just need to wait until they figure it out,” she said.<br><br>The DDA was under a deadline to use the grant by this month, or it would expire and return to the DDA’s fund balance. The grant had been set aside in 2007 for the city’s Public Art Commission to fund art at that parking structure, said Smith.<br><br>The grant was never spent. Dascola and Serras’ group approached the art commission last fall with the mural idea, but there was no criteria or process between the commission and DDA set up to approve it. Both groups met recently “to try to find our way” but nothing has been resolved, yet, said Smith.<br><br>“We don’t have a way to really handle it very well,” she said.<br><br>Reporter Dave Gershman can be reached at 734-994-6878 or dgershman@annarbornews.com.