Nau continues to express concern about scope of proposed Center for the Arts

At the December meeting of the University of Virginia’s Buildings and Grounds Committee, several members expressed concern about the size and scale of a proposed Center for the Arts planned for the eastern end of the Emmet/Ivy Corridor.

“There’s been a lot of discussion between that meeting and today,” said John Nau, the committee’s chair. “I’ve received phone calls, some very, very concerned about scale and need and cost.”

As presented in December, the Center for the Arts would be the new home for both the Fralin and Kluge-Ruhe art museums, UVA’s music department, and a 1,200-seat performing arts center to be named for Richard and Tessa Ader. I reported on the schematic design for C-Ville Weekly.

The Aders donated $50 million toward the $315 million preliminary budget and UVA was counting on a $200 million contribution from the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Nau spent the morning of March 6 at the University of Virginia Architect’s office to find out ways to shrink the scale of the building. He wants a larger discussion at the June meeting with a new architectural rendering.

“There’s no question there’s need,” Nau said. “And I will come off of this simply by saying that its scale has got to fit the footprint. And that’s what we worked on today for well over an hour trying to figure out scale.”

Nau said he felt one option would be to decouple the museums’ move from the performing arts center.

More from the Buildings and Grounds Committee and the rest of the Board of Visitors’ meeting in future editions of the newsletter and on Information Charlottesville.

Before you go: This is the third of several stories to come out of the March 2025 meeting of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors. It was published in the March 8, 2025 edition of the Charlottesville Community Engagement newsletter. There’s a big story that happened at the meeting, but Town Crier Productions seeks to be thorough and this time started at the beginning of the tape.