Late last week, leaders from the four organizations of St. Paul’s Arts Partnership — Minnesota Opera, the Schubert Club, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Ordway — joined by Mayor Chris Coleman, unveiled plans to expand and refurbish the Ordway Center. Specifically, they announced work on a new, much larger Concert Hall for the facility, which will house 1100 audience seats — more than tripling the Ordway McKnight Theatre’s current 306-seat capacity. There are also plans to extend the Ordway’s scenic, generously windowed lobby, which looks out on Rice Park, wrapping additional space around the Concert Hall and offering new lobby views on the Cathedral and downtown’s Fifth Street, as well.

Once completed, the Concert Hall will dramatically expand opportunities for performance and rehearsal space at the center, both for the Ordway’s own theatrical and musical programming and that of its three principle partners (all of them Knight Arts grantees): Minnesota Opera, the Schubert Club and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

In the press announcement, Ordway C.E.O. and President Patricia Mitchell is quoted as saying, “Scheduling the use of the Ordway is complicated, and it historically has been a difficult task to balance the needs of its four main users. The problem of access can be considered a sign of success, as there is more quality programming for the community than there is time in the Ordway. The new Concert Hall is a permanent solution to the scheduling challenge — benefitting all of the Arts Partnership organizations, but most importantly, the broader community.”

This announcement of the landmark’s imminent renovation and expansion comes in the wake of a recent, anonymous donation of $5 million, which put the Arts Partners’ fundraising efforts for the new space beyond the two-thirds point; the partnership has currently raised more than $51 million of the $75 million goal of its capital campaign, and is hoping to gather the remaining funds by March 2012, so construction can begin this spring.

Once the Concert Hall opens (the partners hope, by 2014), the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra plans to make its home there, which will free up the larger Music Theatre (which seats 1900) for more performances and augmented programming by the other three Arts Partners. The nonprofit Arts Partnership organizations also make the case for the economic benefits, of this expanded programming and large construction project. They claim the expansion will bring millions of dollars and hundreds of new construction jobs to the area, not to mention the lasting prospect of drawing fresh audiences, to the tune of 130,000 more people annually, to St. Paul’s cultural district — which, the group argues, would provide lasting benefit not only for the Ordway and its partnering cultural organizations, but also for their neighboring downtown establishments and the larger community.