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TORONTO -- Festival Center, future home of the Toronto Film Festival Group, is one step closer to reality thanks to a capital donation of C$1 million ($872,000) from the Brian Linehan Charitable Foundation.

A room containing research material in the Festival Center's Film Reference Library will be named the Brian Linehan Research Room, in memory of the Canadian journalist. Linehan, who thoroughly researched his famous interviewees, donated his inventory of 30 years of research material to the Library's Special Collections in 2003. Linehan died in 2004.

Fest will also establish the Brian Linehan Endowment Fund, seeded by an anonymous endowment gift of $174,000, which will initially go toward a program called "In Conversation," in which a high-profile director or actor will be interviewed in front of an audience. Fest group intends to raise $872,000 (C$1 million) in total for this fund.

To date, $116 million out of a total of $171 million capital and endowment funds required for the Festival Center's completion have been raised; construction began in February. The Toronto Film Festival Group is skedded to move in in late 2009.