The waiting game is over for the Opera House, and it was worth the wait. The local arts organization garnered the maximum amount available, $50,000, in grant money through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Until this week, the Opera House leadership had put a previously granted $10,708 from the South Carolina Arts Commission on hold. The National Endowment for the Arts is granting fund from the same source and for the same purpose, to help preserve jobs in the nonprofit arts sector that are threatened by the economic downturn.

Newberry Opera House Executive Director Deborah Smith had said the venue was not particularly hopeful that it would win out in the national competition for funds. But the group decided to play a waiting game and hold off on accepting the arts commission funds, in the hope that an NEA-channelled grant might be larger. The wait paid off.

“We are absolutely amazed,” Smith said of the Opera House receiving the NEA grant, and at the maximum allowable amount.

“That the Newberry Opera House is on the radar for the NEA” is just phenomenal, Smith said.

And as for the former grant of $10,708 from the commission, “it’s just more money for the arts in South Carolina,” Smith said. The South Carolina Arts Commission will now disburse those funds to another applying non-profit arts organization.

Even at the higher amount, the funds will still be used as previously planned to continue paying someone already on staff.

The Opera House employs four full-time people. Those are: the box office manager, the technical director, Smith and her assistant. The lighting and sound directors are nearly full-time, Smith says. She explains that the payroll at the Opera House has a “heavy tilt” toward technical labor. But there are five more part-time employees that work various hours in the box office.

Smith says the grant “helps us pay for somebody that we are in absolute need of.”