The Overture Foundation will hold a public meeting Wednesday to detail the next phase of the project to renovate the 100 block of State Street.

Project architect Bill Butler will present the interior layout of several affected buildings, as well as some of the project’s “key spaces.”

George Austin, president of the Overture Foundation, said Butler will tell the Madison Cultural Arts District Board the versatility of the interior plans for the Civic Center, Overture Hall and the Oscar Mayer Theater, among other places.

“One of the purposes of the meeting is to share examples of the spaces’ flexibility with the board as they now begin to focus on the interior physical aspects and decide future programming,” Austin said.

The Overture Project, an effort to improve the performing- and visual-arts facilities in downtown Madison, is the result of a major civic gift by Madison businessman W. Jerome Frautschi.

The birth of the project followed a study conducted in April 1998, which determined an acute lack of quality performance, exhibition, rehearsal, administration and storage space for various Madison art groups and recommended the creation of a cultural arts district near the Madison Civic Center.

The project’s design, approved by the city of Madison May 30, 2001, will encompass the entire Civic Center block and will require the destruction of Deb and Lola’s and the Radical Rye.

The project’s construction cost is estimated at over $100 million. The Overture Development Corporation, a nonprofit organization, will borrow up to $115 million to construct the project using revenue bonds. Fautschi’s gift will provide credit support for the debt, and the debt will be paid from revenues received through a lease with the Madison Cultural Arts District, which the city of Madison created in 2000 to operate and ultimately own the facility. The city of Madison will have no financial obligation for the debt.

The Overture Center will contain a multi-floor rotunda topped with a glass dome. The project also includes renovations of the Oscar Mayer Theater and the Isthmus Playhouse and construction of a new Madison Art Center. The project also includes the construction of Overture Hall, a performance venue seating 2,200, and space for three art galleries, one in the Overture Center and two in the Oscar Mayer Theater, to display works by local and regional artists.

Board member Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, said he looks forward to hearing about the buildings’ finer details.

“Until now, so much of the attention was on the exterior,” Verveer said. “Many in the community will be interested to hear about interior aspects of the project.”

Austin said the Overture Project is slated to be finished in the spring of 2004.

“We are 20 percent done and two years away from completion,” he said.

Austin said the foundations are laid and interior work on the lower levels is beginning.

“When the students come back next fall, they can expect to see the exterior walls of the building and get a better coherent sense of the building’s exterior masonry,” he said.

The meeting will take place Wednesday at 4 p.m. in the Madison Civic Center.