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Yet the proposed African American Cultural Center has the one thing it needs most: money.

The center already has more than enough to match a $10 million state grant it wants, President Neil A. Barclay said. Barclay expects to announce in March that the museum has raised more than $22 million, or about 70 percent of its goal.

Organizers will turn to the public then for help with the final $10 million.

"What we have in store for this public campaign is really wonderful," Barclay said. "We'll really give the community a great sense of pride and ownership not only in the facility, but in the role African Americans have played in this region and the country."

Until now, the nonprofit center has operated quietly. Its board, headed by Oliver W. Byrd, a senior vice president of Mellon Financial Corp., hired Barclay in 2003 and is building support among foundations and businesses. The center has been in the works for more than a decade, since a group of Homewood residents started questioning why more public money was not going to African-American arts.

The project gained momentum four years ago when an organizing committee backed by Mayor Tom Murphy and the city's Urban Redevelopment Authority identified a Liberty Avenue site in the Downtown Cultural District for the museum.

Museum supporters are tapping into the demand for African-American-themed tourist destinations. The Pittsburgh center seeks a distinctive niche by blending history with the fine arts and live performances.

"This is not just a museum," said Grant Oliphant, associate director of the Heinz Endowments, which has contributed millions to the project. "We looked at this as an organization whose time has come, a group that did its homework to develop a realistic, but still ambitious, business plan."

Right now, the center is not even a vacant lot.

Sitting near the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, the center's Liberty Avenue site reflects a part of Pittsburgh's past that civic boosters would rather forget.

Before the city Urban Redevelopment Authority started buying properties, the block featured bars, an adult book shop, strippers and a tailor better known to many for selling sea sponges.

The URA has paid more than $3 million to buy seven properties on the block since 2002. The county has assessed the properties at less than a third of that amount.

The URA picked up its latest parcel in December, buying a brick building that houses the Liberty Tavern for $525,000, or about twice its assessed value.

Denise Gaynor, who operates the tavern but did not own the building, has to leave. She wants the URA to either pay her more than it has offered or give her space in the cultural center.

The URA owes her nothing more than the cost of moving or the value of equipment she has to leave behind, said URA attorney Joe Gariti.

"I'm all for (the center) as long as I get compensated," Gaynor said.

The lone holdout on the block, Sally McKenzie, co-owns the building housing her business, Chez Kimberly, a restaurant with strippers. She and her ex-husband will sell the building, she said, if the URA can find a place for her to move to.

"I want them to find me a building comparable to mine, and I don't think they're going to be able to do it," she said.

The URA has threatened to take buildings on the block through eminent domain, and that remains an option with Chez Kimberly. But Gariti said he expects to find a home for McKenzie's business.

Barclay said he's not worried about securing the site in time for the public money-raising campaign to begin.

"This is why we kind of keep quiet and let people say what they want," he said. "This is all a very carefully choreographed campaign."

In 2003, its first year of seeking contributions, the nonprofit center raised more than $1.1 million, including donations from foundations, businesses and taxpayers.

The Allegheny Regional Asset District, which collects a 1 percent sales tax add-on in Allegheny County, kicked in about half of that amount. The URA, The Pittsburgh Foundation, PNC Financial Services Group and others gave the rest.

A single grant in late 2004 put the center on the map, said City Councilman Sala Udin.

The Heinz Endowments gave $4 million in December, easily topping all of its previous contributions to the project.

"It helped to give the project the credibility that we need as a major cultural asset to the city," Udin said. "It validated that. And it set a bar, a high standard for other giving."

Other foundations and businesses are ready to meet the challenge, Barclay said. He expects to make several similar announcements in the coming months.

"Certainly a grant of that size and from that source is a great vote of confidence on the part of that foundation and of the foundation community," Barclay said.

One reason the Heinz Endowments decided to support the center is that it will not just be another African-American museum. That might have seemed an odd thing to say about a decade ago. Since then, Cincinnati, Baltimore and Los Angeles are among the cities that have either opened such museums or plan to do so.

"We were really concerned at the beginning when it seemed to be more of a museum that it would run into some of the same attendance problems those other organizations have had," Oliphant said.

The center's inclusion of fine arts and live performances should make it a continuing destination for all people throughout the region.

To expand its appeal, Barclay said, the center will talk about Pittsburgh's unique African-American history through values common among the region's immigrant communities: "perseverance, family, coming to a new country or new world and having to make your place there."

The center expects to draw 150,000 visitors in 2007, its first year.

African American Cultural Center board

Executive committee

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