CRA Approves New Site for Dance Gallery

The city’s Community Redevelopment Agency has approved a new downtown site for the Dance Gallery, Bella Lewitzky’s $20-million cultural facility intended to be part of the California Plaza development on Bunker Hill.

The new site, approved at a board meeting Wednesday, will give the Dance Gallery a northern frontage on 4th Street between Olive and Hill streets.

That parcel of land (to be shared with an office tower) was originally designated as part of Phase 3 in the California Plaza construction schedule, to be completed between 1993 and 1995. However, Jeffrey Skorneck, CRA senior city planner, said that the gallery could be built “at any time before or during” that period.

Previously, the gallery was planned for a location at 4th Street and Grand Avenue. But fund-raisers were unable to meet a June 30 deadline (set by the CRA and the California Plaza developer, Bunker Hill Associates) to have all the budgeted $20 million in hand. As a result, that site is no longer available.

The next site proposed, fronting on Grand Avenue, north of the Museum of Contemporary Art, would have placed the Dance Gallery in line with other major cultural institutions in the area(MOCA, the Music Center and the proposed Walt Disney Hall). But, Skorneck said, feasibility studies showed that site to be inadvisable because of the limited space available for the Dance Gallery, problematic parking logistics, the displacement of residential units planned for the same location and the tight construction schedule that would be imposed.

The new site involves no such drawbacks, he said, and (along with other California Plaza projects not yet under construction) the Dance Gallery will have until March 15 to submit complete revised schematic designs.

“The (CRA board) action is subject to working out details with the developer,” Skorneck said, explaining that those details include a “specification of deadlines, when funds would be raised and contingencies.”