Richmond City Council sealed the deal last night for building an arts center in downtown Richmond.

A divided council approved the agreement for the city to help pay for Richmond CenterStage, despite misgivings over limited public review of the document, procedural breakdowns and a speedy timetable imposed by Mayor L. Douglas Wilder.

The 6-1 vote to approve, with two abstentions, allows the $58 million project to move ahead at a guaranteed price and sets a construction schedule that will allow the new arts center to open in a little more than two years.

The deal also commits the city to paying $23 million of the cost, relying on money raised through a 1-cent increase in the meals tax. Most of the remaining cost will be funded through a mixture of private contributions, tax credits for historic redevelopment, and state and federal grants.

Richmond also is committed to paying up to $500,000 per year in matching funds for operating the center.

For Wilder, the vote was a victory for a project he once opposed.

"It's well thought-out," he said in an interview outside the council chambers. "I fought it before because it was not well thought-out, and it was not well-financed."

Richmond CenterStage is scheduled to open in the fall of 2009. It will include a renovated and expanded Carpenter Center, as well as new venues in what's left of the Thalhimers department store building at East Grace and Seventh streets. The new venues will consist of a multipurpose hall, a community playhouse and an arts-education center. Demolition work at the Carpenter Center is under way.

Critics of the project urged the council to delay the vote, which also approved the transfer of title to the Carpenter Center for the Performing Arts. The Carpenter Center will be refurbished and expanded as the centerpiece of the CenterStage complex between East Grace and Broad streets.

"Why are you having this rushed vote tonight when it is clear that you don't have the details?" asked Don Harrison, a Richmond resident who has been one of the most vocal critics of the arts-center project.

However, supporters said the project is long overdue.

"Richmond CenterStage has been a dream of a lot of people for a long time," said Sue Fitz-Hugh, a member of the board of directors of the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation, which has raised private donations to pay for most of the cost. "It's had a lot of setbacks, but it continues to have support from a lot of people."

Council President William J. Pantele, 2nd District, shepherded the agreement through a tense council debate yesterday afternoon, keeping the deal on track for a final vote last night.

"There are few projects in the city of Richmond that have had as much discussion and disclosure as this one," Pantele said.

The agreement already had been approved by the city Planning Commission and the council Finance Committee, which held a special meeting last week to review the document.

The tight timetable was nearly undone by a procedural hurdle that arose after the City Attorney's Office noted that some documents that were part of an attachment to the agreement had not been included when the proposal was introduced at a special council meeting in late August.

City Attorney Norman Sales assured the council yesterday, however, that it could solve the problem without delaying the vote by simply deleting references to the missing attachments. He said the deletions were not substantive enough to require readvertising the amendments for action later this month.

However, even the project's supporters were unhappy that the Wilder administration didn't give City Council the agreement until Aug. 16 and then required that it be approved last night.

"The dynamic here is that City Council is pretty sore over the way it's been treated," Pantele said.

Contact Will Jones at (804) 649-6911 or wjones@timesdispatch.com.

Contact Michael Martz at (804) 649-6964 or mmartz@timesdispatch.com.