On Thursday morning, June 19, in the convention center on Lincoln Street, the Renaissance Foundation passed a milestone in its fund- raising efforts to convert historic Bethel Church into a cultural arts center. The breakfast gathering filled the room, mostly on the drawing power of former Charlotte Mayor Harvey B. Gantt, the morning's keynote speaker.

Gantt was born in Charleston, S.C., where he graduated second in his class at Burke High School. On a Merit Scholarship, Gantt attended Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, from 1960 until 1962.

In late 1961, he applied to architecture school at Clemson University, and he was admitted in 1963 under a court order as its first African- American student. He graduated with honors in 1965. After a few years in an architectural office, he left for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., where he received a master's degree in city planning in 1970.

Gantt opened his part- nership, Gantt Huberman Architects, in Charlotte in 1971. In 1987, Gantt was named a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects. In 2006, the North Carolina chapter of the AIA presented Gantt with their annual firm award.

In 1983, Gantt became Charlotte's first African- American mayor, serving two terms.

Gantt began his address at the convention center with his beginnings in Charleston, about when he was a delivery boy on a bicycle for a drugstore. His fascination with cities began in Charleston. He had only one prime example, but he could see a city was where energy and creativity came together and where people moved up social and economic ladders. He knew he was inside something special, but he couldn't command the language to discuss it.

He spoke about entering Clemson as he walked alongside Columbia's Matthew Perry, his lawyer then and today a U.S. District Judge.

High- rise buildings and mega- deals are not enough to make a great city, Gantt declared. Small things can have the greatest impact, particularly in a combination of history and culture.

Take Columbia's Bethel Church, for example, at the corner of Sumter and Taylor, surrounded by Palmetto Health Baptist. The church building was built in 1921 following designs by John Anderson Lankford, the first registered African- American architect in the U.S. His firm's home office was in Washington, D.C., but his projects were scattered up and down the Eastern Seaboard.

Bethel Church is one of three Romanesque church structures designed by Lankford remaining in S. C.

It will cost of $5,700,000 to renovate Bethel Church. Once in full operation as a cultural arts center, the facility and its activities should pump $15,000,000 annually into Columbia's economy, observed Gantt.

The first level will include a museum, documenting and displaying the history of the African- American faith community.

The second level can accommodate a performing arts venue seating up to 600.

The third level will house the Bell Tower of Spirituality and the Healing Chapel. The chapel will serve as a meditation area for patients next door and visiting friends and families.

Gantt shared his personal history when he was mayor pro tem in Charlotte. He helped to restore the Little Rock AME Church in downtown Charlotte and turn it into the city's Afro- American Cultural Center, forcing a bend in 7th Street as it was widened.

Charlotte's current development of downtown cultural destinations began more than 20 years ago with the Little Rock AME restoration. Now downtown Charlotte is looking at $150 million in public funds and another $85 million in private endowment for a new art museum, a new music hall, and a new African- American cultural center to replace the first one in Little Rock AME.

Columbia is already ahead of where downtown Charlotte was when Gantt championed the cause of Little Rock AME. The Columbia Museum of Art moved onto Main Street 10 years ago. As Gantt put it to the Columbia audience, continue the cultural arts push with this conversion of Bethel Church and leap forward from there.