Pittsburgh is the first place I've lived long enough to watch one person's dream turn slowly into reality.

I have no idea whether visionaries are distributed evenly around the country, but given their rarity and our need, the more important question is, can visionaries be duplicated? In this sprawling, fractured region, where keeping up with developments in every community is pretty much an impossible task (see more on that topic in the note at column's end), Ron Carter and his vision for The Strand Theater have garnered regular coverage in these pages. For nearly three years, news stories and opinion columns have kept readers apprised of Carters' struggle to save and reinvent the historic Zelienople building.

The coverage is not due simply to the skills he can muster from his former career in corporate marketing -- though a well-written press release never hurts.

It seems, rather, that The Strand's fate happily rests where one man's vision, skills and tenacity intersect with the public's good will. An individual's idea and passion must come first, but both individual and community are necessary for such a project to succeed. In a region reeling from the lack of visionary leadership, it might be profitable to think a little bit about why The Strand project seems to be working -- despite some daunting obstacles.

When I first wrote about it in June 2002, Carter told me it was the "crazy half-moon doors" that first drew him to the derelict building on Zelie's Main Street.

Their unusual cutouts reminded him of a theater he used to see during boyhood visits to his grandmother in Beaver.

Carter not only noticed something that was there -- the doors, the unused building -- but he noticed something that wasn't there -- a performing arts venue in Pittsburgh's northern suburbs.

Emotion alone won't resuscitate a building -- or a neighborhood or a county, for that matter. Carter, for instance, didn't waste any energy wishing The Strand could once again become a movie palace, since people's cinematic expectations changed long ago.

"There's a reason this place went out of business," he said matter-of factly.

Though his initial attraction to the building was sentimental and the neighborhood's initial reaction to his proposal was nostalgic, his band of volunteers have pursued the vision of bringing a new purpose to the old theater with careful research and thoughtful strategizing.

They've done demographic studies by ZIP code, analysis of the building and surrounding properties, a detailed business plan, grant proposals -- all the dry homework necessary to determine if a pleasant dream could become a sustainable reality.

"Emotional attachment works at first," Carter says.

"But when people see how something can work, then they're willing to donate time or money" to make it happen.

"We looked closely at the negatives and the positives, and the positives continue to outweigh the negatives."

The Strand Theater Initiative balances emotion with substance, an individual's vision with many volunteers' participation, a community-oriented purpose with a sustainable economic plan. It balances heart with brain.

All those things have contributed to making the Strand initiative successful -- "to date," Carter cautions with a laugh.

And as a writer I'd point out that perhaps another reason it captured our imagination is, it's a great story. One man who desires "meaning or impact or a legacy of some kind" has inspired his community to create something new with the remnants of its past.

We see remnants of the past all around us that could be radically different with similar vision and hard work. We're hungry for more stories like this one and hope that there are more Ron Carters in our midst.

*

In last week's column on the need to examine municipal expenditures with an eye toward possible municipal mergers, I gave out-of-date information that must be corrected.

In summer 2001, Avalon officials announced plans to spend $800,000 to renovate the town's historic borough building.

When I set out last week to compare Avalon's renovations with those planned in Bellevue -- as a cautionary note to pro-merger residents -- my online search of the Post-Gazette archives turned up the story on Avalon's planned renovations but nothing on the fact that they were canceled.

Here's what happened: Bids for the Avalon renovations were so high -- $1 million just for the first floor -- that officials decided to tear down the old hall and build a new one for $1.5 million, with construction to begin last spring.

Now that I know this, an archives search using different search terms yields a September 2003 story that updates Avalon's change in plans. And since then, construction was delayed a year -- until this spring -- and the cost has grown to $2 million.

Unfortunately, the latest facts support even more strongly my original warning that residents must combat public expenditures that make merging our inefficient and wasteful municipalities less likely.