“So when is this going to be finished?” Tommy Mendoza asked his table mates on the patio of the Margaritaville restaurant. They were watching construction of the new Sharon Morse Performing Arts Center while having a beer. “I really couldn’t tell you,” said Jeff Bogdanski, who is house sitting in the Village of Chatham for his vacationing brother-in-law.
“In Melbourne where I live, building projects just drag on and on, if they even start them at all,” Bogdanski continued, “but here, you see movement every day. I’ve been watching this a few weeks now, and I never saw green building wrap like this.” “I really can’t figure out what it’s going to look like,” said Larry Belfeld, a renter from Massapequa, Long Island. “but my neighbor, who has lived here a long time, said we can trust them not to build junk. Right now it’s a mish-mash,” Belfeld added, “especially on the side and in the back. Have you seen the new steel square and lots of aluminum trusses on the ground back there? Don’t know if those will be a staircase, an art gallery, a fire escape — who knows what.”
On any given day, patrons at Margaritaville and nearby Luigino’s restaurants have similar conversations. Although the builders’ sketches were published more than a month ago, the current edifice looks nothing like the plan — so people continue to speculate and wonder. The construction is a hot topic with older couples walking their dogs; young visitors with kiddies in tow; vendors and customers on market days — all eyes are on the green and yellow striped structure with the metal cages.
“It looks pretty good from across the lake,” said Irene Smitts,who was on her way to the Rialto Theater. “It’s a lot better from a distance than close-up here. I was over at La Hacienda Center the other morning for exercise, and from there it looked nice.”
