Center in the Square

Roanoke, VA's Center in the Square is Finalist for Urban Excellence Award

Center in the Square is one of five finalists for the 1997 Rudy Bruner Award for Excellence in the Urban Environment. Finalists receive honorariums of $1,000, media recognition and inclusion in a book published by the Bruner Foundation. The winning project, selected in May, receives an unrestricted award of $50,000.

Site visitors from the Bruner Foundation visited Center in the Square in April. The task force visits each site prior to award selection "in order to familiarize themselves with every aspect of the project operations and history, and to answer any outstanding questions of the Selection Committee with regard to the project."

The Bruner Foundation was established in 1967 "as a philanthropy drawn to the untried." The Rudy Bruner Award for Excellence in the Urban Environment, since 1986, is given to those developments which are "socially supportive, physically pleasing, and economically viable, public places." Awarded projects "successfully reconcile competing financial, visual, and social values" in their development process.

The Maya Angelou Community Initiative won the 1995 Bruner Award. The Portland, Oregon-based project focuses on the needs of women and children in poverty by providing safe housing.

Center in the Square, in 1996, received one of 25 National Excellence Awards for The City Summit, each of which represented "outstanding examples of creative solutions to urban problems." The awards were presented by the U.S. National Preparatory Committee for Habitat II with the support of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In presenting the awards, Henry G. Cisneros, then-Secretary of HUD, commented that "these programs represent the best of what our nation has to offer in community building."

As a National Excellence Award winner, Center in the Square participated in Habitat II, The City Summit, The Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements in Istanbul, Turkey, in June 1996.

Center in the Square is the home of art, history and science museums; a planetarium, a year-round professional theater, an arts council and three museum shops. Nearly 14 years after its opening, Center in the Square represents an outstanding public/private partnership. The concept of housing multiple organizations under one roof, centralizing support services, utilizing a sound older structure and minimizing administrative overhead makes this innovation practical and sustainable for any community. All of its five organizations have flourished.

For more information, contact Center in the Square of Roanoke, VA, phone 1-540-224-1247.