Orlando approves a plan

to use $45 million in hotel taxes for the final phase of the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.

The Orlando City Council unanimously gave its blessing Monday to a plan that would pump $45 million in hotel taxes into the final phase of the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.

“This community has long dreamed of a world-class performing arts center,” said Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer. “... When things are worth doing, they’re worth sustaining that effort to get [them] done.”

Dr. Phillips Center president and CEO Kathy Ramsberger said she was “very pleased” with the proposal, which will go to the Orange County Commission for final approval on Nov. 1.

“It’s going to complete the arts center that was intended back in 2007,” Ramsberger said.

The funding plan, proposed by Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs, was approved unanimously earlier this month by the Tourist Development Council, on which both mayors sit.

The money would mostly fill a funding gap to allow construction to begin on the $203 million, 1,700-seat acoustical theater known as Steinmetz Hall, which will be used by Orlando’s ballet and philharmonic.

Ramsberger said the arts center still must raise about $10 million before it breaks ground, hopefully in January. On that timetable, Steinmetz Hall would open in early 2020, she said.

The debate over how to spend the county’s soaring hotel tax collections heated up in April, after the Central Florida Hotel and Lodging Association pitched a broader plan with a higher price tag and more diverse priorities, which divided Dyer and Jacobs. The version pitched by Jacobs centers on the acoustical hall.