In architect Moshe Safdie's design for Renaissance Square, the Monroe Community College complex opens off to the left of the public plaza, the theaters to the right. Escalators at the rear lead to the transit center.

Renaissance Square, one of the biggest public-works projects in Monroe County's history, is nearing a kickoff. County officials hope they'll be able to start demolishing buildings on the site this fall. And they'll take that step even though the public doesn't have answers to some key questions. Among them: how much construction costs on the $230 million project have increased.

County officials have said that they have enough money to build the bus station and the Monroe Community College facility. All they need now is money for Ren Square's two theaters. They've hired a fundraiser - Brakeley Brisco, a national firm whose clients have included the Smithsonian Institution, the Boston Symphony, Carnegie Hall, and, in Rochester, the George Eastman House - and they've started planning a funds drive. But officials aren't saying what the goal is, or how much has been raised.

In a recent interview, Mark Ballerstein, Ren Square's project director, discussed Renaissance Square funding, the theaters, and construction. Following is an edited version of that conversation.

City: What is the fundraising goal for the theaters?

Ballerstein: We've been advised not to share that goal with the public because it affects private donors if they know what it is. There is a strategy that does include a private fundraising goal and, depending on how much money we raise, just what type of theater we can build. Most campaigns are done with what's known as a quiet phase and a public phase. We're definitely in the quiet phase still.

Which arts groups have been involved?

We started this fundraising effort about a year and a half ago, and at that point several of the arts groups were involved: Eastman School of Music, Garth Fagan Dance, Rochester Broadway Theatre League, and Downstairs Cabaret Theatre.

Eastman School of Music has received grant dollars from the state and is doing its own fundraising for its school improvements. So they've pulled off and gone separately. The idea of the midsize theater is not officially on the books anymore, so Garth Fagan Dance is also not involved with the fundraising.

So that leaves RBTL and Downstairs Cabaret. Are other groups involved?

Well, other groups have indicated interest in use of the theater, but they're not involved in the fundraising effort at this time.

What fundraising firm has been hired?

It's a private fundraising consultant, Brakeley Brisco. They do a lot of work locally, but they are located in several offices across the United States. Their main one is in Connecticut.

Who hired them?

Main and Clinton Local Development Corp. hired them.

How long have they been on board?

I'll say it was summer of 2006.

What theater arrangement are you raising funds for? A large and small theater or just a large theater?

It's the Renaissance Square performing arts center, which includes those two. The original concept, which I kind of alluded to before, included Eastman and a mid-size, but since it's kind of fragmented off separately, we're just kind of left with what's at Renaissance.

Can you give us an idea of how much money has been raised so far?

We're not allowed to. Not yet.

What's involved is a strategy that you normally follow for private fundraising: Develop a case statement which explains the benefits of the project or the purpose for the donations. Then you analyze the feasibility of raising funds for that purpose. And that involves interviewing several potential donors to get some feedback on their review of the case statement. That's kind of where we're at right now. When you have that analysis, you can better judge what you're going to be able to raise and where the likely donors are going to come from.

It's been rumored that the arts center is behind in planning because arts groups couldn't agree on what it should be. Is that the case?

It did take a while for a decision to be made about what the performing arts center is going to involve at Renaissance. But now that everybody's signed off on that, I don't think that's affecting our ability to move forward any. To some degree, I guess, we would have been farther with the private fundraising if we had a clearer definition as to what was going to be involved with that. So I guess, to some degree, you're right.

What were the disagreements among the arts groups? What were they struggling with?

I don't if we had many disagreements. Actually, the group worked fairly well together. There was more: "What should be included in the Renaissance Square site?" "What should be included at the midsize performing arts venue?" and how to jointly progress those projects. And then I think what actually finally resulted was the Eastman School of Music's decision to go forward with renovating Eastman and not pursuing the midsize.

That decision was actually fairly recent.

Yeah, I think it was January, if you call that recent.

How long will the county wait to raise money for the arts center? At what point might the county say it can't raise it and call the project off?

We're not looking at it that way. We are going to raise the money, and it's just a matter of time and effort. I don't think there's a "How long are we going to do this?" thing. It's more, "We're going to do this, and we're going to do it right, and we're going to be proud of it when it's done."

We'd like to complete the study this fall. The actual fundraising for something of this magnitude, to get all the funds in hand, is about a two-year effort. We don't need all the funds in hand to progress the project. We just need to have a good-faith statement by those donors.

Will you start on other parts of Renaissance Square while you raise money for the arts center?

Well, we're going to progress the project in the most logical fashion we can. Once the environmental review is done, we will go forward with the design phase. Depending on where we are with funds for the different portions of the project, we'll progress what we can at that time. Hopefully we'll be able to get some of the funds from the state that will allow us to progress design of the theater at the same time.

Is building Renaissance Square in stages, with the arts center constructed later, after the MCC campus and transit terminal are built, still being considered?

Practically speaking, the size of the project and just the logistics of the site itself - you can't build it all at once. You have to start kind of in the center and work your way out. As far as actually breaking off a piece and building it three or four years later: that's not part of any consideration at this time. It's one project. It's one design. We're not planning on not building the theater.

A lot of Renaissance Square ties together, right?

It's very much linked. In addition to the public interconnections, public spaces between the three entities, we also are sharing a lot in the way of the building-support systems. The heating and cooling plants and the loading docks and the things like that that are common between the three components. Any of our building infrastructure items are shared between the three, which would make it very difficult to split anything off for a long period.

Is the Moshe Safdie design very specific, or is it more a shell, where some things could be done inside to save some money?

The design that's been done to date is what we would call a schematic design, which is about 25 percent of the design effort. So it's got pretty good definition of what things look like on the outside and how things are interrelated in the structural framework of the building.

We have a lot of ability to adjust the details as we go into the final stages of the design itself. Things can change fairly easily still, and the expense can be controlled and managed fairly easily. If we were truly completed, then you'd be stuck and have to do redesign.

Are there parts of the design that will be used for Renaissance Square and other parts that will be scrapped?

We've completed, essentially, the schematic design phase, and we're on hold at that level. It's almost 100 percent normal that designs modify or change as they go forward from schematic design to design development to final design. There will be changes. I can't identify what they are or aren't at this time. It's a normal process where the owner and the architect work together in finalizing the design and the scope of the project before it goes out to bid.

Will Safdie do more design work for the project?

Our intention is to extend the contracts that we have with all of the design firms that are involved to go to the next phase, which is the design-development phase.

Did Safdie design the project so that if worse comes to worst, the arts center could be built after the rest of the project?

I think a major feature is the arts center and the interconnection of the arts center to the transit center, which then ties into the college. There's no concept or design effort that he's done that doesn't have the arts center included. I think it would look pretty strange without it right now.

When will the public get a look at any new designs? It sounds like that won't happen until the environmental review is completed.

Right. Until that's done, we're kind of stuck. We won't be doing any new design efforts, or additional design efforts, I should say. Our intention is to have as much community interaction as we can when we have more information to talk about. We'll have several community workshops throughout the design phase. They seem to have been well received and pretty well attended. So we'll continue with that.

Are there any designs that are around that are newer than the Safdie plans everybody's seen?

No, not really. It's the same from October.

Can you give us an idea of what Ren Square looks like at the moment?

Going from the west to the east along Main Street, we have the Granite Building. We plan on using part of that for MCC faculty functions. And [behind it] we have the Edwards building, which is a historic building on Division and St. Paul that's going to be renovated to be used for MCC student support services and mid-sized classrooms.

In front of the Edwards building, there will be an open public plaza. That'll be landscaped and available to the public. That'll also be a space that could be separated off and used by the college for any special events they may want to do outside.

Going further to the east, we have the transit concourse itself, which has the same alignment as Stone Street extended to the north. On that transit concourse, the initial entrance area is a larger urban-room space that has retail on both sides of it and provides access portals over to the college and over to the performing arts center.

If you continue on the transit concourse straight to the north, you go up a set of escalators. There's retail on both sides. The retail we're talking about is convenient-style retail: you know, food and Hudson News-type things you'd see in the airport.

You continue ahead, and there's an access point to the left into the community college. A little bit farther down the concourse to the left again, there's an access point down to the Trailways-Greyhound inter-city bus terminal. And then going a little bit farther, there's an access point down into the main RTS bus platform, which will hold 30 RTS buses at one time.

Going further to the east along Main Street, off of the urban room, we have the lobby of the performing arts center, which also functions as the east entrance to the transit center. The performing arts center has a 2,800-seat, Broadway-style, amplified-sound theater with all the amenities associated with a performing arts theater.

And then as you come around Clinton, there's an access to a community theater, which is about a 250-seat theater which has a street-level entrance and a two-story lobby that goes up into the performing arts theater itself, or the small theater.

Continuing farther to the north on Clinton, you would see the skywalk that connecta the Renaissance Square facilities to the St. Joseph's garage. And then going a little bit farther on Clinton, you'd see the entrance ways for the buses to enter the transit center portion, which runs east-west pretty much along where Mortimer Street is today.

That's a quick fly-by description of how it's laid out.

When construction starts, in what order will the components be built?

The typical process would be that we would do the site preparation, which includes the demolition of the buildings that are on the site. And then any cleanup of any environmental contamination that we may find in the soil below those structures. We have to abandon the utilities in those portions of Division and Mortimer Street. That pretty much gets the site ready for construction.

Then we would be excavating for foundations and putting foundations in. Then we would essentially be building up in the center portion and then working out into the perimeter and into the north. The very first portions would be the transit center concourse and the community college new-construction portion.

Then we would work over towards the performing arts center, the tower, and the main seating area for the large theater, and then the steel for the rest of the project would follow. And then it's just a matter of enclosing it and the finishes inside. It's a three-year process.

Will buildings be demolished before the final plans are revealed?

Yeah. To not delay and incur escalation costs, you acquire the property and demolish buildings as soon as you can. That's a lengthy process. There's a lot of asbestos abatement; there's material to be broken down and recycled. We actually will start the excavation and the foundations before the final design is done. But the key aspects of the project will be set. The size and the components involved will be set before we start excavation for foundations. We need to know where the walls are, but we don't need to know what's on the walls.

The cost estimates for Renaissance Square were generated over three years ago. Meanwhile, the costs of supplies such as steel have gone up. Has that been taken into account?

Since we haven't gotten a new design, we haven't done a new estimate. We will update estimates as we go into the next phase of design. We include escalation as part of our project budget. We hope that the amount we've got in there is not being outpaced by the escalation. I think we've got enough to go forward.

The environmental review is behind schedule. Why?

Part of it involves negotiation of an agreement by state historic-preservation people and the Federal Transit Agency. We have several historic properties that we're going to be touching or affecting in some way: the Edwards building, the Granite building, even Sibley's, because we are going to affect the skywalk that's currently going over to Sibley's. The historic-preservation office wants to have a clear understanding of what we're doing to ensure that those items are protected and preserved.

When might the environmental review be finished?

We hope it's done this fall.