At an afternoon press conference on June 5, 2000, at city hall, Roanoke's then-mayor, David Bowers, had big news.

The city was committing $4 million to a combined new Art Museum of Western Virginia and IMAX theater project, to be located across the railroad tracks from Hotel Roanoke, in a parking lot behind Billy's Ritz restaurant. The city would donate the property as well. The project, along with a proposed biomedical research park, Bowers said, would transform the city.

Just two summers earlier, museum officials had been thrilled to learn that they might be moving to the former Grand Piano & Furniture Co. building on Campbell Avenue. The building had been donated to Center in the Square, and the art museum was cramped for space at the main Center building on Market Square.

But much had changed in 22 months. The Grand building, which the company had occupied since 1966, and was their flagship store until 1991, had turned out to be several buildings under a modern facade. Renovating it to museum standards would be a nightmare, and an expensive one at that.

Meanwhile, the Billy's Ritz site, perhaps the most prominent undeveloped spot in all of downtown, had begun to look inviting. Consultant Brian Wishneff, now a Roanoke City Council member, had been studying the economics of locating an IMAX theater there. He saw advantages to combining both projects at the site.

"You need only one heating system and one lobby and one ticketing area," Wishneff explained in 2000. In addition, revenue generated by the IMAX might help the new museum with its operating costs.

Wishneff recently recalled pitching the merger for the first time to some of the museum project's prime movers - including Heywood Fralin, now museum president. "They were kind of taken aback," he said, but soon warmed to his suggestion.

"I was sort of talked into the idea that film was an art form, that it would add interest and accessibility to the museum," said Judy Larson, the museum's director at the time and now director of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. "I thought, 'Why not?'"

Options weighed

Wishneff said that he had heard the IMAX was being reconsidered, and is not offended. "If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. I told them, 'Don't let the tail wag the dog.'"

City Manager Darlene Burcham said the loss of the IMAX should not alter the city's commitment to the project. "I don't think it's a deal breaker at all," she said.

IMAX or no IMAX, the advantages of the Billy's Ritz site seemed obvious to the city manager in the summer of 2000.

"I thought it had far more visibility," said Burcham, who also liked the message that a striking new building would send to people driving by on Interstate 581. The message is that Roanoke "supports arts and culture," Burcham said. "That it's a community that is ever changing."

Fralin, too, liked the Billy's Ritz site. It's bigger than the Grand building, though oddly shaped; it's at the eastern end of the city's $3 million railwalk; and a building in that location would "dominate downtown Roanoke," he said. "There really were no negatives. Only pluses."

Some began to argue for a building that would put Roanoke on the cultural map.

"Roanoke is a terrific city and a great place to live," said Larson. "It has a very charming, picturesque downtown. The one thing to my mind that it lacked was a signature building." Hotel Roanoke, Larson said, is "a nice postcard image. But is that what Roanoke needs to be known for as we march into the 21st century?"

Others were coming to agree. Most had heard about the spectacular new Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, which had helped turn a down-at-the-heels Atlantic coastal town into an international tourist destination. Designed by American architect Frank Gehry, the sleek, titanium Guggenheim was a powerful lesson in cultural tourism and on the advantages of an unusual, even radical museum design.

Fascinating work

Those charged with choosing an architect were soon in agreement that they wanted a building that was a work of art in itself. And if that building stretched the architectural envelope - well, fine.

"I would almost say it was a criterion," said Valeta Pittman, a member of the museum's building committee and a former museum board president. "It was in my mind."

Said Deanna Gordon, the retired Roanoke County school superintendent who chaired the committee: "We were looking for someone who was looking toward the future."

The committee compiled a list of possible architects that included some of the biggest names in modern design.

The list "grew and grew and grew," recalled Larson. The 11-member committee eventually divided up the names, did research and reported on what they had learned.

Pittman gave a talk on Italian-born Renzo Piano, one of the architects of the High Museum in Atlanta and the Menil Collection in Houston. (Piano ultimately proved too busy for the Roanoke project, she said.)

"It was fascinating," said Pittman of the selection process. "It's the most interesting thing I've ever done in my life."

It seems to have stretched some minds. Attorney Heman Marshall, another committee member, said studying the architects "was helpful in getting your mind around the huge variety of styles that would actually work" in designing the new art museum. In the beginning, "I guess I thought it should sort of look like what we've got," he said.

One thing the committee soon realized was that downtown Roanoke - with its century-old market buildings, its high-rise Wachovia Tower, its half-timbered Hotel Roanoke and its futuristic, Raymond Loewy-redesigned train station - had no unifying architectural theme to limit an architect's imagination. At least one architect who visited called downtown Roanoke "eclectic."

Names began to fall off the list. Some were too busy; others failed to impress. "We were considering things like, 'Does this person stay on budget?'" Larson said.

In the end, there were four candidates: E. Verner Johnson, a Boston architect who had done the museum's early space studies; Michael Graves, designer of the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley in Winchester and a line of whimsical consumer products for Target stores; Antoine Predock, who designed the Tacoma Art Museum in Washington state; and a young Los Angeles architect named Randall Stout.

Stout: good impression

Four years later, memories have faded. "I know that one cold December day, we brought in a number of architects, many of whom had greater name recognition at that time than Randall Stout," recalled Gordon, the committee chairwoman.

But Stout impressed. "He had an impeccable background," noted Marshall. Stout had architecture degrees from the University of Tennessee and Rice University, and a resume that included a stint as senior associate with Frank Gehry from 1989 to 1996. "He had a terrific background in museum programmatic planning."

"Randall came totally prepared," recalled Pittman. "He actually brought a tabletop model of the market area." Where some of the architects spoke in generalities, or gave dry architecture lectures, Stout showed the committee members how the proposed museum might work on the Billy's Ritz site - where the entrance could go, and the loading dock, and the IMAX.

"It came down to Predock and Randall," said Jenny Taubman, a member of the building committee who also chaired the fund-raising committee (she still does). Predock talked impressively of a building that would reflect the mountains, she said. "He's very experienced. He's already a star. I think he was also going to give us a beautiful product."

Stout seemed competent, accommodating, courteous. His east Tennessee drawl was reassuring.

On the downside, although Stout had done internal space studies for many museums, he had never designed a museum from scratch. And he was young, the youngest of the finalists- only 44 at the time, in a profession where people are often in their sixth decade before they receive major commissions. But Stout had designed some striking buildings in Europe.

To Judy Larson, Stout's age was a plus. So was the fact that he had not yet designed a whole museum. "You just know you're going to get 200 percent of that person," she said. "It's always a risk. Anybody would have been a risk. I rather like the idea of giving younger people a chance."

And it didn't hurt that Stout was charming. After his return to California, the architect sent a package to Taubman. The box was decorated with some of Stout's building designs.

Inside was a bottle of champagne.

They chose Stout.

Wrestling with a huge box

Sometime in the fall of 2002, an enormous crate arrived at the art museum. Nearly 10 feet wide and 5 feet deep, it almost filled the freight elevator, recalled museum registrar Mary LaGue.

A worker hauled it into the museum's library on a forklift. Then LaGue and several helpers unfastened screws, removed blocks of wood and began to wrestle out the model for the new museum.

LaGue, like others at the art museum, had seen some early drawings of Stout's design - but nothing like this.

"Oh, cool," was her first response to the 44-by-56-inch model, which was enclosed in Plexiglas. Also in the crate was a model of downtown Roanoke, showing the building in context.

The model was officially unveiled to board members in the museum's lecture hall. As Taubman recalled it, the model was covered with a cloth, which was whisked away for maximum effect.

What was the board's reaction?

Pittman, asked the question in an interview at a Roanoke coffee shop, sat straight up in her chair. She inhaled sharply. Her eyes grew big.

Then she laughed.

Coming tomorrow: The architect's vision.



Randall Stout, 46

ADDRESS Los Angeles.

HOMETOWN Knoxville, Tenn.

EDUCATION Master of Architecture, Rice University, 1988. Bachelor of Architecture, University of Tennessee, 1981.

FAMILY Married, with two young boys.

OCCUPATION President, Randall Stout Architects Inc., since 1996.

PRIOR EXPERIENCE Senior associate, Frank Gehry and Associates Inc., 1989-96. Worked with Gehry on the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, which opened in 2003. Also project designer,Skidmore Owings & Merrill, 1984-87.

BEST-KNOWN BUILDINGS TO DATE Steinhude Sea Recreational Facility, Steinhude, Germany; Melittabad Aquatics Facility, Minden, Germany; Cognito Films, Culver City, Calif.; Blair Graphics, Santa Monica, Calif.

LAST MAJOR PROJECT Designing the $19.5 million addition to the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, Tenn., which will open in April.

CURRENT PROJECT Designing the new Art Museum of Western Virginia.