It opened last June: late, incomplete and over-budget. Since then, the Public in West Bromwich has split local opinion; many thought a threadbare schedule and the failure to open the centrepiece digital gallery was poor value for £60m.
Yesterday management was trying to work out whether to celebrate or mourn, after the Arts Council axed the £500,000 revenue grant – half the annual running costs – but offered the local authority £3m to come up with a new business plan to make the landmark building work.
Now owned by Sandwell council, the Public will not close, at least in the medium term. The cafe, 500-seat theatre, conventional art exhibitions, recording studios and music gigs are up and running, but the digital arts gallery may never open.
The Arts Council chair, Sir Christopher Frayling, said: "The fact is that, although the building is open, the interactive art gallery at the centre of the vision for the Public is not. We have done everything we can but there comes a point where we have to make a difficult judgment."
The Public director, David Clarke, has pledged to keep the centre going and praised the support from the local authority: "They've been visionary. We all need to hold our nerve."
The spectacular building, designed by Will Alsop, equally mocked and admired, a vast black hangar pierced with blobby pink-framed windows and nicknamed "the pink elephant", opened two years late. The project went into administration in 2006 and chief executive Sylvia King, whose idea it was, left. It was saved by the local authority and a further injection of public funds.
However, the £7 admission charge had to be abandoned because the digital gallery, in which visitors would be linked by chips to computers creating their own constantly changing light shows, never worked and has never opened.
The Arts Council called in independent consultants, who concluded that, even if it worked, the gallery could never achieve the 160,000 paying visitors a year on which the business plan was based. Sandwell was seeking a threefold increase in the Arts Council grant, up to £1.5m from 2011. Instead, the council decided to axe the grant from March next year.
The sweetener was the offer of a one-off £3m grant to Sandwell to come up with a better business and artistic plan. "The real tragedy for everyone would be if this building's doors were to close forever," a spokeswoman said.
In West Bromwich, the view was succint. "I've not seen £60 million's worth this morning," said retired teacher Denis Winning, who had come from Wolverhampton on spec because of the fuss. He had found everything either closed or broken.