On drawing boards: Downtown concert hall

WINONA, Minn. – A classy state-of-art concert venue will be built on the edge of downtown by billionaire philanthropists Bob Kierlin and Mary Burrichter. The couple calls it the Minnesota Masterpiece Hall. The plan is a $35 million 700-seat auditorium. There will be an on-site art gallery to accommodate overflow art works collected over the years by the Kierlins – more than can be accommodated by the Minnesota Marine Art Museum, which they built in 2006 on Riverview Drive. The music hall will be on Fifth Street. where the old and abandoned Winona Junior High School auditorium is being torn down. It’s in the neighborhood of these historic Fifth Street landmarks: Public Library, Masonic Temple, and the Laird-Norton headquarters, which now is Winona States University’s Center for Art and Design. The site is across the street from Kierlin’s new Main Square commercial-residential-school complex.

Uni-purpose concert hall

Burrichter was clear in an interview with the Winona Post that that the Minnesota Masterpiece Hall will not be a multi-purpose event center. It is being purpose-designed for optimal acoustics and stage design for music. “It’s for music. It’s not for 25 different purposes,” Burrichter said. Hers was an oblique reference to a failed Winona State University plan, hatched with community leaders 10 years ago, for state funding for a combination convention center-auditorium-sports arena. Burrichter’s subtle point: Masterpiece Hall will be more a Carnegie Hall than a LaCrosse Event Center.

Classy Fifth Street neighborhood