ARTS GROUPS COMPETE FOR BALBOA PARK SITE

The city-owned House of Charm has suddenly become the focus of competing arts groups, much like the Balboa Theater has been the focus of a tug-of-war over renovation as a performing theater or conversion to an art museum.

The House of Charm in Balboa Park has been home for years to the San Diego Art Institute Gallery, which wants to become a municipal art gallery. It’s a logical progression for an organization that exhibits and promotes the work of local artists, but the institute has little financial muscle.

Because of that, its backers may have been preempted from any consideration by the city three years ago when a group of well-heeled opera and classical music devotees offered to build a music museum on the site.

The city responded by giving the Musical Arts Foundation until this August to raise about $6 million to construct the new facility on the House of Charm grounds in an exclusive bargaining agreement. So far $1.2 million has been raised, with a firm commitment for another million, and the foundation plans to seek a three-year extension of the agreement.

Few question the merits of a music museum and a municipal gallery. Both are worthy projects. The same can be said for the Balboa Theater, where the options of converting the theater into an art museum or restoring it as a 1,500-seat performing arts theater have their attributes.

In both cases--the House of Charm and the Balboa--the city offered public property to one private arts organization without going through a formal due process procedure on the request for proposals.

Like the Musical Arts Foundation, the San Diego Art Center, which has an exclusive agreement to develop the city’s Balboa Theater as a museum, has failed to raise the $4.5 million it said it would by April.

The City Council will consider a new agreement with the Art Center and will vote on whether to approve the Musical Arts Foundation’s request for an extension in August.

JUNIOR DRAMATISTS: The 37-year-old San Diego Junior Theatre is taking itself more seriously these days. A juiced-up summer school program and its first major fund-raising projects point to a new attitude around the theater, which for years was viewed by those associated with it as a recreational activity. Now quality is becoming more important for the city-sponsored year-round theater program for children ages 8 to 18.

The theater board has beefed up its staff by splitting the job of executive director into two positions--an artistic director, charged with tending to education and artistic matters, and an executive director, given the task of raising money and running the business side of the house.

Under Paul Russell, the new artistic director, the six-week summer program was revamped and now includes three two-week courses. The result is that this summer’s enrollment is up 100%, with 475 children in the program.

New Executive Director Marion (Mimi) Keener, who was a special promotions expert and volunteer fund-raiser for the California Special Olympics, says that with operating costs at $400,000 a year, Junior Theater can no longer afford not to raise money. Keener expects to raise $160,000 this year to help cover costs.

Raquel Welch has agreed to a black-tie fund-raiser that will pay tribute to her as a Junior Theatre alumna. A date in October has yet to be agreed on. Another fund-raiser will be a haunted house. Keener hopes the event will attract up to 30,000 kids, net at least $40,000 and boost the community’s awareness of Junior Theatre.

ARTS EDUCATION: Another group concerned about children learning the arts is the newly formed San Diego Institute for Arts Education. Sponsored in part by the Junior League, the institute is a post-Proposition 13 effort to put arts education back into the schools.

The institute arranged for three teachers each from 14 San Diego area schools to receive two weeks of training here with local artists in dance, theater, music and/or the visual arts. The idea, said Arts Institute Executive Director Elizabeth Bergmann, is to have teachers develop a program for their classes using the visits from artists and material they gathered from their summer training.

The cost of the program for the initial 42 teachers, including the two weeks of summer training, comes to $130,000. Bergmann still has about $50,000 to raise.

ARTBEATS: Kim McCallum, the multithreat theater man, has returned to the Bowery Theatre. The actor, director, producer and designer had been on sabbatical teaching theater at New Mexico State University, where he worked with playwright Mark Medoff (“Children of a Lesser God,” “In the Hands of its Enemy”) on Medoff’s new play “The Heart Outright.”

McCallum starts off locally again directing himself, Mickey Mullany and Paulette Mayne in “The Fox,” Allan Miller’s adaptation of the D.H. Lawrence novel. It opens at the Bowery Thursday. . . .

Ladislav Vychodil, the highly regarded artistic director of the Slovak National Theatre, is in town for two weeks. Vychodil is designing sets for San Diego Repertory Theatre’s world premiere of Douglas Jacobs’ “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” at the Lyceum Stage. The play opens Oct. 10.