Status: Postponed

Budgeted funds: $300,000

Project spending: $37,934

Background: Several years ago, when the Cary Town Hall was being built, the town and nonprofit Cary Visual Art teamed up.

They hatched plans for a public art project at the intersection of Academy Street and Chapel Hill Road and in other spaces surrounding a newly-expanded Cary Town Hall.

The town paid for and received designs for at least two projects.

One would have been placed at the intersection of Academy and N.C. 54, according to Lyman Collins, Cary's cultural arts manager. The other would have been integrated into the construction of the new town hall.

Then came plans for a downtown streetscape project that would have included improvements to the appearance and functionality of downtown Cary.

A conceptual plan for the streetscape project, approved in 2006 - the year the new town hall was finished - focused on a two-mile stretch of Academy, Chatham and Harrison streets.

That plan also included different ideas for public art at the intersection of Academy Street and Chapel Hill Road, Collins said.

As a result, Cary set aside the original plan for public art at the rear of the town hall campus.

Since then, the streetscape project also has been delayed as a result of a budget crunch.

Meanwhile, construction delays extinguished plans for public art near the building's east entrance.

Collins said artist Catherine Witchery created an artistic design that would have been etched into glass panels along a public walkway leading from the visitor parking lot to the second floor of town hall.

But because of the construction issues, town officials scrapped the project and instead installed aluminum handrails along the walkway.

Cary has kept the designs for the public art projects.

Collins said the town has continued to discuss how it might incorporate those designs into future projects in Cary.

But because of cuts in capital spending - and because the town and Cary Visual Art now regularly work together to draw public art exhibits to the town hall campus - Collins said there are no immediate plans to restore funding for the gateway project.

Staff Writer Jordan Cooke