As the founder of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, George Wein has already made one major contribution to the continuation of the city's culture. On Thursday morning, he was on hand for the unveiling of another.

The 89-year-old festival impresario attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday (Dec. 11) for the George and Joyce Wein Jazz & Heritage Center. The new educational and community center at 1225 N. Rampart St. is named for Wein and his late wife and business partner, Joyce. Wein helped cut the ceremonial red ribbon Thursday morning alongside Mayor Mitch Landrieu.

The center is owned by the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation, the nonprofit organization that owns Jazz Fest. The foundation's longtime offices are next door to the new Jazz & Heritage Center.

"We expect this facility, located at the gateway to the Tremé neighborhood, to give a major boost to the cultural and economic development of not only Tremé, but to our entire city," said Don Marshall, the Jazz & Heritage Foundation's executive director.

In 2008, the foundation bought the former Tharp-Sontheimer-Laudumiey Funeral Home. Two separate townhouses on the site, built in the 1870s, were combined into one Italianate-style building in the early 20th century. After acquiring the property, the foundation's board of directors and staff spent several years deciding what to do with it.

Eventually a plan emerged. The space, after an extensive renovation, would become the permanent home for the foundation's Don "Moose" Jamison Heritage School of Music, a free program for young musicians. Since its founding by saxophonist and educator Kidd Jordan in 1990, the Heritage School of Music has been housed on university campuses. Now it will inhabit the seven classrooms and 200-seat performance space -- every space is wired to a central control room for audio and visual recording -- at the George and Joyce Wein Jazz & Heritage Center.

The building also will host cultural programs presented by the Jazz & Heritage Foundation and other arts and community organizations.

Most of the building's original façade was maintained in the renovation, along with the architectural outlines of the older, front part of the building. Much of the 12,500-square-foot structure's rear section, a more recent addition, was rebuilt from the ground up.

The total bill for the project came in at around $9 million. The foundation, which generally nets around $3 million from the Jazz and Heritage Festival each spring, self-financed the bulk of the cost.

Around $3 million was donated by various benefactors, including George and Joyce Wein, the Goldring Family Foundation, ArtPlace (a consortium of major national foundations), the Louis Prima and Gia Maione Prima Foundation, the Ella West Freeman Foundation, the Helis Foundation and the State of Louisiana. Other individuals and local and national foundations contributed to the foundation's capital campaign.

Numerous manufacturers of musical instruments donated gear to the center, including Shure (microphones), Yahama (drums), Casio (keyboards), Zildjian (cymbals) and D'Addario (strings).

His sizable donation to the project notwithstanding, Wein and his wife were the obvious choice for namesakes of the new center. Wein was already a well-known jazz club owner when, in the 1950s, he founded the Newport Jazz Festival, the model for all outdoor jazz festivals that would follow.

In the early 1960s, city leaders invited him to consider founding a festival in New Orleans. But several obstacles, including segregation laws that prohibited interracial bandstands, stood in the way.

In the late 1960s, the city staged two versions of the International Jazz Festival without Wein. In 1970, Wein's Festival Productions produced the first New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Louisiana Heritage Fair in what is now the Congo Square area of Armstrong Park, augmented by evening shows in the Municipal Auditorium. Wein is credited with instigating the festival's early, and ongoing, emphasis on indigenous food and crafts, as well as music. He also hired a Tulane University student named Quint Davis, who is now the festival's producer/director.

"George and Joyce Wein have done so much to benefit our community and our culture," Demetric Mercadel, president of the Jazz & Heritage Foundation's board of directors, said in a statement. "It is only fitting that we recognize their many contributions by having their names grace this wonderful new facility. This is a true testament to their legacy."

Grand-opening festivities continue throughout the weekend.

On Friday (Dec. 12) at 8 p.m., avant-jazz saxophonist and educator Kidd Jordan - who founded the foundation's Don "Moose" Jamison Heritage School of Music in 1990 -- and his accomplished offspring, Kent, Stephanie, Marlon and Rachel Jordan, will headline a grand opening concert; students from the Heritage School of Music will open the show. Admission is free, but all advance tickets are sold out; any remaining seats will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis. The concert will also be live streamed at wwoz.org, the web site of the foundation-owned on WWOZ-FM.

On Saturday (Dec. 13), the center throws open its doors for a Treme Neighborhood and Community Open House. Students from the Heritage School of Music will also perform a free holiday concert on Saturday.