PROVO — If you live in Provo, expect a knock on your door this month or next as schoolchildren, Boy Scouts and octogenarians join forces to raise the final $710,000 for the Provo Center for the Arts.

The arts center will be completed in late June or early July, and city leaders held a press conference Tuesday to announce the first events scheduled at the 670-seat performance hall and to ask residents to make donations.

The $8.5 million price tag for renovating the former city library at 421 W. Center is one-third the cost of building a center from the ground up, Mayor Lewis Billings said.

"There's been a movement afoot in this community for an arts center that goes back 30 years," he said. "We weren't ready for a $25 million price tag then and we still aren't, but at this price the Provo arts center is already being perceived by businesses as new momentum in Provo's downtown, and you will see other, private reinvestment in the downtown in the next six months.

"We hope people will step up and be willing to share and invest with us in something we think will be really great."

Provo school newsletters announced the mayor's "I Love the Arts" campaign last week, and residents have been finding the mayor's message in their utility bills this month.

Schoolchildren are being encouraged to bring their change to school and drop it in donation boxes, and 30 neighborhood leaders throughout Provo have promised to knock on every door in the city.

One Scout troop is planning to raise money as a service project, and longtime Utah Valley arts supporter Lael J. Woodbury spoke eloquently on behalf of the center at the press conference.

Woodbury said his grandchildren will watch the "Nutcracker" ballet at the Provo arts center in December.

"They will see a world that is better than the one around us," he said. "They will behold a world of beauty, shimmering color, a world of harmonious proportions, of complex and glorious sound and ideal movement, of comely men, women and children, and winsome animals. And that concept — that something can be better than what we see now — will inspire and pull them forward for the rest of their lives."

The fund-raising should be complete by the end of May. The center will have soft openings in late June for the Miss Provo Pageant and late July for a production of "Cinderella."

The first "big-door opening" will be Aug. 7 when country singer Neal McCoy will perform. The grand opening is scheduled for September, Provo Arts Council Chairman Newell Dayley said.

The center is completely booked for December 2007 and December 2008 and for most of December 2009, said Kathryn S. Allen, executive director of the Provo Arts Council.

"We hope to be booked 138 nights a year," Allen said. "We're already over 100 for the next year, and we're not even open yet."

Allen also introduced the new manager for the center, Paul Duerden, who has managed Brigham Young University's theaters in the Harris Fine Arts Center for 20 years.

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E-mail: twalch@desnews.com