MILLINOCKET – With important help from a pending $126,000 state grant, the effort to create a $750,000 downtown arts, culture and retail center in the former J.J. Newberry department store could culminate with construction starting by June 1, a leading proponent said Friday.

If all goes well, the Katahdin Cultural Center will secure the grant and several tentative commitments that would allow the 21-month project to open its doors, organizer Guilds Hollowell said.

“We have five lenders to finance complete construction costs to the building assuming we meet some of our fundraising goals,” Hollowell told the Town Council during a presentation on Thursday.

If the Legislature approves it, the grant state Rep. Herbie Clark, D-Millinocket, sponsors will allow Hollowell’s still-forming nonprofit entity to pay the mortgage on 225 Penobscot Ave. The Legislature will decide the grant within a month, Clark said Friday.

Hollowell’s group must secure the mortgage, launch a $1 million, five-year fundraising campaign and show $250,000 in secure pledges to get the loans, he said.

“We have about $50,000 in secure pledges already,” he said Friday. “Another $200,000 is indicated to me assuming all the other pieces are in place.”

About 30 organizations, including Millinocket Regional Hospital, the towns of East Millinocket and Medway, Brookfield Power Co. and the Millinocket School Committee, have issued letters of support, Hollowell said.

With Hollowell’s presentation, the council continued a discussion begun two weeks ago. Councilors Bruce McLean and Matthew Polstein wanted a resolve favoring the center, but Councilor Scott Gonya showed it would violate council procedures. Resolves must be placed on council agendas before votes, Gonya said.

McLean told Town Manager Eugene Conlogue to put the resolve on the agenda days before, but Chairman David Nelson wanted councilors to digest Hollowell’s presentation first. The matter is expected to resume at the next council meeting.

Since its launch in May 2005, the center effort has sparked controversy with several self-imposed deadlines lapsing and months of apparent inactivity.

With support from Councilors Jimmy Busque and David Cyr, Gonya has pushed for the town to seize the building by eminent domain and turn it into a park or parking lot. He called the building a safety hazard and the center effort a financially nonviable charade that taxpayers will end up paying for.

Conlogue said inspections reveal the building to be sound. McLean and Polstein said the center’s business plan is strong.

The council debate resembles the communitywide disagreement over the Millinocket Area Growth and Investment Council, with some within Millinocket saying they believe the cultural center – to them “the cult center” – is a leading edge of an environmentalist-based movement bent on eliminating the area’s traditional industries and land access and turning the region into a depopulated tourist trap.

Hollowell calls such contentions absurd.

“All they see is that I am this devil incarnate. They are extremely destructive,” Hollowell said. “I don’t know how you can think that a cultural center is a detriment to your community. It’s an effort to celebrate who we are and our roots. How can you think that’s evil? It’s ludicrous.”

Clark said that aspect of the anti-cultural center movement is a product of irrational fears created by the loss of some of the area’s traditional paper industries.

“I can’t see it being a reality movement. I think everybody’s grasping for something,” Clark said. “I think there’s basis to it and it’s that we’re all afraid of losing what we have.”

The council’s apparent split over the center won’t stop his bill, Clark said. He said the center – which was first suggested without any controversy in 1999 – would be a viable part of a varied local economy.

Clark compared efforts to keep the Katahdin region’s economy solely based upon traditional industries, as embodied by the anti-cultural center movement, to making a fruit bowl only with apples.

“When you put a fruit bowl together you just don’t have apples. It’s going to be made up of all different kinds of things,” Clark said.