This Tampa couple's gift of $5-million to the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center will go toward the construction of its new education building. Did you say $5-million? Dollars? That's right; and the Dr. Pallavi Patel School for the Performing Arts is going to reflect the magnitude of the gift. Scheduled to open in fall of 2004, the 45,000-square-foot addition to the north side of TBPAC will offer dance studios and music studios, multipurpose rooms for theater, music and large rehearsals, and, of course, a performance space. Instruction will cover both classical and modern dance, classical music and jazz, straight theater, musical theater, technical theater and more. And oh yes, there'll be a library of the performing arts, open to the public, where you can find material on composers and writers, as well as scores, scripts, essays and videos. By the way, the Patel generosity doesn't only include the arts. They also built a 50-bed hospital that serves more than 100,000 people in India, and they provide money for the Hope Scholarship Foundation, which each year gives around 70 financially strapped students two years of college tuition. People like the Patels make it look like the human enterprise just might work, after all.
This article appears in Sep 25 – Oct 1, 2003.