Split Council Approves Plans for Palmdale Arts Center

After almost six years of community debate, a divided Palmdale City Council has approved plans to build a $5-million, 750-seat performing arts center despite warnings that the city-funded project could become a boondoggle.

By a 3-2 vote, the council late Wednesday agreed to accept Los Angeles developer Ron Ordin’s donation of an undeveloped 5.7-acre site near the Antelope Valley Freeway for the center. The council also authorized about $330,000 for architectural drawings needed for its construction.

Some Palmdale residents and officials complained the city’s money should first be spent on badly needed parks and recreational facilities. In addition, the neighboring city of Lancaster is already building a city-funded $7.1-million, 725-seat theater center less than 10 miles away.

“I can’t in good conscience obligate the citizens to this kind of debt when I see other, more pressing needs that need to be taken care of,” said Palmdale Mayor Pro Tem Tom Smith, who opposed the center. He also warned that its operating costs could become a financial burden on the city.

But the council’s decision was hailed by a group of Palmdale civic leaders and arts activists who have been pushing the project since 1984.

“We’re not a little town anymore. We are growing into a fairly sizable city now,” said Councilman Joe Davies, a prime backer of the project.

As a result of the council action, the city has abandoned its original, less-costly concept to convert the city’s Maryott Auditorium, a nearly 40-year-old former school building, into a 400-seat theater. That project was expected to have cost less than half as much as the new center.

The council also rebuffed a recent campaign by a citizens group to have the performing arts center combined into a proposed multi-use recreational center on some other site. Proponents argued the dual-use center could be more economical, but theater backers opposed that concept, arguing that plans for the recreational center are still too preliminary and combining the two would have delayed the project needlessly.

As now arranged, the city would pay the construction cost of the performing arts center, except for about $450,000 raised thus far by the Antelope Valley Cultural Foundation, a private, nonprofit group that has fought for the project. Davies is on the group’s governing board.

The city also would be responsible for operating and maintaining the center at a cost estimated at up to $350,000 a year. A city staff time-line given to council members said a construction contract could be let as early as August with targeted completion of the center by July, 1991.

The proposal caused an unusually sharp rift on the council and was approved despite opposition from Mayor Pete Knight and Smith. Both said the city should have further explored converting the city auditorium. Originally, the city and the foundation were to split a $1.5-million fee for that project.

One activist backing the combined theater-recreation center concept warned that the city would be digging itself in a financial hole with the proposed center. “It won’t fly,” said Robert Hackman, a Palmdale resident and longtime actor who cautioned that city-run theaters almost always lose money.

The primary center users would be two private groups which are also active in the cultural foundation: the Desert Opera Theatre and the Palmdale Repertory Theatre. Both would use the center at no cost, just as they have used a smaller city building since 1980 without paying the city.

Ordin, a commercial developer, said he donated the theater site southwest of Palmdale Boulevard and Division Street and made a $100,000 pledge mainly as “an altruistic thing.” But Ordin acknowledged the center will help attract interest in his planned movie and recreation facility on adjoining land.