That kind of thing is happening often these days, adds Mrs. Simmons, the chair of the two-year-old LancasterARTS cooperative that aims to enhance the presence of the arts in Lancaster.

The artwork produced here is high quality, and the arts culture is ascendant.

Many downtown galleries are flourishing. Play by play, the Fulton Opera House is stoking its reputation as an East Coast theatrical star. The Pennsylvania Academy of Music is composing an architectural masterpiece on North Prince Street. A block farther north, the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design is continuing to expand rapidly.

But this bustling Bohemian scene is also surprisingly vulnerable.

The growth has been largely organic, arts advocates explain, and it lacks the century-old momentum and institutionalized support of many big-city counterparts.

At the same time, says Lancaster arts consultant Lois Dostalik, painting, music, dance and the like are still commonly misconstrued as icing on the economic cake.

In fact, according to a study just released by the nonprofit Americans for the Arts, in Washington, D.C., they are a key ingredient of that cake.

In one of the most eye-popping statistics cited by the Arts & Economic Prosperity III report, nonprofit arts and culture audiences pumped more than than $18 million into Lancaster's economy in 2005.

The figure for cities across the nation, heavily weighted by New York and other metro arts communities, is about $20.2 million.

Other Lancaster-size communities that were studied saw a median economic benefit of $3.8 million.

"This really knocked our socks off," Simmons says.

To ensure the arts community's longevity, LancasterARTS has hired a first-ever chief executive officer, Liz Todd Lambert of Lititz.

Lambert was picked from 88 applicants in a national search. One of the main goals of her job, which is being underwritten by the Lancaster County Community Foundation, is to transform Lancaster into a regional arts destination.

That objective, announced recently by Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray, also lies at the heart of a new sustainability strategy developed by LancasterARTS.

And it will be a focal point for "Exploring Our Creative Side," the Pennsylvania Dutch Convention & Visitors Bureau's 2008 marketing vehicle.

"There are a lot of ideas percolating," says Lambert, an accomplished pianist who has a passion for ballet and extensive training in music and business administration. Prior to moving here with her husband about a year ago, she worked for 20 years as a strategic and financial planner for McCormick & Co. Inc. in Baltimore.

Paramount in her goals is wooing what arts advocates call the "creative class" of residents who advance new ideas, technologies, designs and art.

"It very much centers around that," says Joyce G. Heberlein of Lancaster Galleries, 34 N. Water St. "This has been a place for creative juices to flow."

Art and circumstance
Lambert, who will work out of a Pennsylvania College of Art & Design office, starts July 2.

"I'm very excited" about the opportunity, says Lambert, who will begin her assignment by getting to know the arts community better.

Her first tasks will include upgrading the LancasterARTS Web site and collaborating with the Downtown Investment District and the city to make Lancaster an arts destination.

Lambert, a Wilmington, Del., native and a Lebanon Valley College graduate, recalls visiting Lancaster County as a child in the 1950s and 1960s.

The community holds tremendous potential, according to Lambert.

"It's a very nice city to be out and about in," she says, and the artistic ambiance has much to do with that.

Pennsylvania Dutch folk art - think Amish quilts - likely started the creativity movement that later flowered around Lancaster notables such as painter Charles Demuth.

The trend got a mid-20th century shot in the arm when designers, engineers, photographers and others funneled here to work for industry.

Growth mushroomed in recent years along with a growing consumer sophistication and business sector realization that art, prosperity and quality of life are inextricably intertwined.

That dawning awareness has taken many forms.

The 25-year-old Pennsylvania College of Art & Design, which remains one of only two professional art schools in a U.S. city of fewer than 1 million - the other is in Portland, Maine - has exponentially expanded its student base.

In 2005, the Research Center of the Association of Independent Colleges & Universities of Pennsylvania reported that the Lancaster arts school conferred a statewide economic benefit of more than $8.5 million.

"Almost 1,000 artists a year come through here," says president Mary Colleen Heil.

Then, to name just a couple of other pillars of the local arts scene, there's the Lancaster Symphony and, of course, the Fulton.

A dozen years ago, the opera house wrapped up a $9.5 million renovation and reinvented itself as a full-season professional theater.

Now, says managing director Aaron Young, "We've had our best season ever," a 76,000-ticket tally that is 23 percent better than last year's.

He credits the long-term evolution of the arts scene to generous patrons, such as the late Helen Hager, and to an outsize nucleus of talent that is drawing ever more artisans from New York and other large markets.

"It seems like it all kind of convened here in Lancaster," says Young, himself a transplant from a Kansas City, Mo., repertory theater post. It's the smallest place I've ever lived in," he says, but it's also a "creative hotbed. Who'd have thunk?"

Dennis and Gaye Cox did think carefully before launching Gallery Row in the 100 block of North Prince Street in 2004.

Now, Dennis Cox says, the four-building startup is "working famously" and fulfilling his vision of complementing other galleries and non-arts retailers.

Establishing Gallery Row was foremost a business decision, says Cox, who estimates that nearby galleries annually reap a couple of million dollars in sales.

Another success story is Lancaster Galleries.

The Water Street shop that opened more than two dozen years ago with a couple of workers now employs eight, says owner Heberlein.

Art sales volumes are supplanting the custom framing and restoration jobs that were long the store's bread and butter, she adds.

"People are planning trips into the city, and they're now including the arts in what they want to do."

Shadows and light
The Arts and Economic Prosperity III report for the first time comprehensively quantifies the economic impact of that influx.

According to the report, the nonprofit arts and culture industry pumps $27.86 million a year into the local economy, supports the equivalent of 796 full-time jobs and generates local and state government revenue of $2.47 million.

Researchers determined that the industry spends more than $9.8 million annually and leverages more than $18 million in additional spending by audiences on restaurant meals, retail items, parking, baby sitters and other expenses.

Americans for the Arts surveyed 995 event attendees in 2006 and concluded that 49 percent were local and 51 percent were from out of the area.

That means the city is already well on its way to becoming a regional arts draw.

And, because the study did not gauge the impact of for-profit arts businesses, the cumulative benefit is likely greater than reported.

But somber hues infuse this rosy picture.

A lively arts community is not in itself "a magic bullet" that can solve all of Lancaster's problems, Cox acknowledges.

(Four years ago, the Lancaster Crime Commission that Cox chaired proposed solutions to some of the problems, such as violent crime, that continue to plague the city and county.)

Too, Cox and Heberlein point out, much of the success of the Lancaster arts scene is recent and is hitched to First Friday and to the visitor traffic generated by Central Market, which is open only on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

Arts advocates say gallery closings are generally offset by the opening of new businesses.

Still, says Heberlein candidly, "It's not an easy business. ... Most artists are terrible business people."

Testament to this dynamic is a Pennsylvania College of Art & Design course that guides people through the art business ropes.

Another course at the college teaches students how to be consumers of art.

While advocates emphasize that the arts are thriving here as never before, several refer to its "fragility."

"Right now in the city of Lancaster," says Dostalik, the president and chief executive officer of E4 Exchange Inc. consultants, "the arts are at a tipping point."

But that's where Lambert and the unification of arts stakeholders come in.

Educating the public about the true economic windfall of the arts is a top priority. So is getting stakeholders, many of them startups focused on individual survival, to talk about the future of the collective arts scene.

"It's the first time the group has all been at the table," Heberlein says.

The city cannot manufacture an authentic arts scene, she adds, but "The art will happen as long as the environment is there" to allow it.

Cultivate and preserve that environment - walkability, historic architecture, "that cafe society, if you will" - and you build on Lancaster's role as a special incubator for artisans.

"You need to have young artists doing things on the edge because that's what keeps things pure and honest," Heberlein says.