ORANGE BEACH – Excited is a good word to describe Coastal Art Center of Orange Beach Director Desiree Blackwell and her staff these days.

When they peer out the windows of their temporary headquarters – a mobile home set up on the grounds – they see more encouraging signs they’ll be in the new facility soon.

“I really, really hope we are in there it time for the festival and that’s March 11,” Blackwell said. The 43th annual Orange Beach Festival of Arts returns to Waterfront Park on March 11-12.

With a big smile on her face Blackwell gave an impromptu tour of the emerging structure, pointed to offices with walls that will contain windows from the former Orange Beach Hotel. The old building served as headquarters until extensive mold damage and structural damage forced the city to remove it and start over.

“It’s amazing when you walk in,” she said. “It won’t be quite as striking an inside picture as when the staircase gets in. We will have that antebellum, sweeping staircase that’s just so pretty.”

But she and the center’s staff aren’t the only ones excited about the new building’s potential. Inquiries come in every day from people wanting to book the facility, mostly future brides.

“We’ve got about six or seven weddings pending, and three with money down,” Blackwell said. “We’re using theknot.com. That’s how brides plan weddings these days. It’s all digital. We get one or two a day requesting information.

“We’ve already booked a big conference for the fall and several weddings. The interest is there. But the interest was there before we tore down. They keep checking back, checking back. They know the progress is happening out there and we’re booking.”

The Alabama Art Educators will have their annual conference at the new center in October of 2017 and in the future there are hopes to land the Alabama Clay Conference.

“We are excited for the interest and excited about the people coming,” Blackwell said. “We’re just thrilled at the interest level.”

Besides being able to host weddings both inside and out, the center will be able to accommodate business and community meetings of all types in several spaces. The Children’s Studio, attached to the main building at the southwest corner is available for groups of 30 or so.

“Upstairs in the conference room we’ll have big Panasonic flat-screen smart TV and the same thing in the Children’s Studio,” Blackwell said. “That space is multi-purpose, too and it’s a rentable for small meetings.”

Being so close to the construction and its progress, center staff have been able to incorporate some changes. For meetings in the main gallery, which can accommodate 200 people seated at tables or 250 standing, the center can also set up chairs to face a drop-down screen for presentations.

“We have a few things we have gone in and tweaked a little bit,” Blackwell said. “Once you see it and you’re in the actual space discussing the needs for groups and what you’d like to use this for in the future, you discover those needed tweaks .”

For instance, above the door header inside the east alcove seemed the perfect place to put up the screen for presentations.

“With so much glass, we did not have an open wall space to put a drop-down screen and projector,” Blackwell said. “After a little review and walking around thinking about it, we got a little creative. The headers in each of those small alcove galleries are really high. They were almost too high. So we’re going to drop that header just a little bit behind the east alcove and we’re going to put a motorized drop-down screen.

“So when someone needs to speak we can set chairs up and they would be grouped facing that small gallery room. Then we can roll it back up and it’s behind the header when we’re done.”

The city is also exploring options to expand parking around the center. A lot now used for parking east of the library will also be improved.

Slated for improvement are spaces in Waterfront Park and south of the art center. With both lots enhanced more than 150 parking spaces will be developed.

“It kind of already a parking lot but we’re going to make it more refined,” Blackwell said of the Waterfront Park spaces. “There will be a lighting plan to tie the Art Center and Waterfront Park together, as well as an improved entrance from Canal Road.”