IRVINE WILL GET THEATER FOR THE ARTS

After 12 years of planning and numerous attempts to gain enough fiscal backing, the City of Irvine is expected to start construction of a $9.5-million, 750-seat performing arts theater next year at UC Irvine.

The last major obstacle was cleared this week when the City Council voted 4-1 to authorize an $8-million bond issue to finance the Irvine Performing Arts Theatre. The initial $1.5-million bond issue was approved in 1974.

“It’s been a long, long fight, but we’ve finally done it, thanks to everyone--the city, the university, the Irvine Co., the community,” said Councilwoman Sally Anne Miller, a longtime advocate of the theater project. “Believe me, it’s not every day you can get the backing for that kind of money these days, even for such a wonderful cause.”

Although the city is paying for all construction, the city and university are sharing the annual operating costs--two-thirds by the city, one-third by UCI. The two-acre, university-donated site is a lawn and parking area of Gateway Plaza between Campus Drive and the Administration Building and across from the Irvine Co.’s Town Center residential and commercial development.

In 1978, the UC Regents had approved the Gateway site for the possible construction of a full-sized complex by the Orange County Performing Arts Center organization. The Arts Center board, however, abandoned that site in 1979 and is now building a 3,000-seat theater near Costa Mesa’s South Coast Plaza.

In 1982, UC Irvine offered to donate the Gateway Plaza site for a city-constructed, medium-sized theater. Although the city’s cultural advisory panels remained enthusiastic about the Gateway Plaza project, it remained on the shelf for lack of any city funds beyond the original $1.5-million bond issue.

Miller said the impasse was broken only in recent months, thanks to a new City Council bloc and the backing of UCI Chancellor Jack Peltason and Irvine Co. President Thomas Nielsen.

In sharing the theater, UCI is expected to use the new facilities about one-third of the time. (UCI also has smaller existing theater and studio performing facilities at its Fine Arts Village complex.)

“We believe the (new) theater rounds out our community-oriented fine arts program,” Peltason said. “It will provide a living classroom on campus where students not only perform, but also learn lighting techniques and set design.”

Miller said the attractions are to be all “tailor-made” for the medium-sized facility and would in no way compete with the far larger Orange County Performing Arts Center. In addition to the kind of smaller touring troupes that are already booked by UCI, she said, the new theater could be used for children’s programs given by the South Coast Repertory Theatre and Orange County Philharmonic Society, and performances by Ballet Pacifica of Laguna Beach.

Other possible presentations, she said, could include the Irvine Community Theatre, Irvine Symphony Orchestra, Irvine Academy of Performing Arts, South Coast Symphony and the Pegasus children’s theater group.

“This theater is a significant and long-awaited addition to the cultural environment of the community,” said Irvine Co.’s Nielsen, who announced a $100,000 company grant to help underwrite the first-year operating costs. “Its construction and operation is now feasible through the creative combination of resources from the entire community.”

Ground breaking is expected to take place in eight to 12 months, said Miller, who added that construction may take about two years.

A search for an executive director is expected to begin this fall. Nominees for the nine-member operating board, composed of community and UCI representatives, is expected to be approved by the City Council Sept. 10.

Also up for council approval are the preliminary designs by Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons, the San Francisco-based architectural firm for the theater. Operating costs are estimated at $300,000 a year, Miller said. An endowment trustees panel, which is to include Nielsen as a member, is being formed to raise a $3-million fund for operations and maintenance.