Once complete, Place des Arts will light up the night sky.

Stephane Gauthier, president of the board of Place des Arts, said Friday the building, at the corner of Larch and Elgin Streets, will be a showstopper.

“It’s been a long time coming, nearly 10 years working on this project,” he told reporters after the exterior design was unveiled. “The community has been hoping and dreaming of this for 50 years.”

The building — a modern, four-storey behemoth that is all glass, wood and metal — looks like a good companion for the architecture school across the street.

The 40,000-square-foot facility will cost $30 million to build and will include several venues.

The consortium of Yallowega Bélanger Salach Architecture and Moriyama Teshima Architects designed the multidisciplinary arts centre, which will house a concert hall, a multi-purpose studio, the Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario, a 40-seat bistro with a seasonal sidewalk terrace, a boutique, an early childhood artistic centre with a playground and office space.

“It’s a creative space that will give us the opportunity to make big and dramatic changes,” Gauthier said.

The seven founding members of ROCS (Regroupement des organismes culturels de Sudbury) will all be renting space at the facility, essentially creating a new arts cluster, while enhancing the creative and cultural energy that permeates downtown.

“It is modern, but the materials that compose it tell a story — the steel ages very well and is very sturdy,” Gauthier said. “It also has patina. We really wanted a building that is not entirely new. The glass is new — it lets people look in and is very inviting; it looks to the west, to the future, but at the same time, the steel is very robust. It’s the industrial past and present of Sudbury and its richness.”

Place des Arts will also include a ghost forest, “the wood of Ste. Anne des Pins coming back to Sudbury,” Gauthier said. Sudbury was originally known by this moniker.

Phase one is complete and Gauthier said he expects phase two — the actual construction — will get underway later this spring. They still anticipate opening in fall 2020.

Caroline Mulroney, the provincial attorney general and minister of Francophone affairs, attended Friday’s unveiling. While not an architecture buff, she was excited by the design and said the building will undoubtedly be beautiful once it is complete.

“I love how bright it is and at night it’ll be all lit up,” she said.

It is important for the government to support Francophone initiatives, Mulroney said, as the community has been a part of the Ontario landscape for hundreds of years.

“Francophone culture in Ontario, in the north and in Sudbury, is a huge part of this area,” she noted. “Their culture is important on a local and regional level. Provincially, the Francophone community has been a part of our province for hundreds of years, and we have a stake in making sure that from a cultural standpoint, we’re supporting projects like this so that the culture can continue to grow and be nurtured.”

It was a packed house at the McEwen School of Architecture on Friday and there was excitement in the air as the curtain was dropped and design unveiled.

Gauthier said officials anticipate hosting 850 activities annually, and they expect 50,000 people will visit during the first year. According to a feasibility study, the economic impact Place des Arts will have during its construction is estimated at $18.7 million and it will create 180 jobs. Once it opens its doors in 2020, it is estimated that 29 more jobs will be created.

“This project gets people excited; we’ve wanted this and dreamed about this for so long,” Gauthier said. “But it’s not only a Francophone thing. It’s for everyone.”

mkkeown@postmedia.com

Twitter: @marykkeown