Plans Advance for Arts Center at Saddleback

Plans are moving forward at Saddleback College to provide fast-growing South Orange County with a 1,500- to 1,700-seat performing arts center that could cost as much as $25 million.

The project recently was added to the school’s five-year master plan, the first step in a long process to bring the year-old idea to fruition. In the coming months, a planning committee is to select a site on the Saddleback campus in Mission Viejo and will start preliminary design work and cost estimates.

If all goes well, officials say, ground-breaking could take place by 1994.

College president Constance Carroll said last week that the school plans to make the arts center available to “large name” performers and touring companies and local performing arts groups. “We’re looking for something to tie South Orange County together as a regional resource,” Carroll said.

In the five-year plan, the estimated cost of the project is given at $10 million, but an official cautioned that this is merely a “paper figure” based on a state formula normally used to calculate the cost of classroom space. The actual cost could exceed $25 million, said Gregory Bishopp, the college’s dean of fine arts and communications and chairman of the theater’s planning committee.

College officials hope to approach the state for funding in about a year, though Bishopp guesses that private sources also will have to be tapped. The DeBartolo Corp., owners of the Mission Viejo Mall, and the Mission Viejo Co., local developers, already helped raise $125,000 in private funds to start the planning process.

Bishopp said South Orange County is in desperate need of a larger theater facility. Saddleback College operates the 404-seat McKinney Theatre, currently the area’s biggest performing arts hall.

“We’ve outgrown (McKinney) both in size and ability to schedule events,” Bishopp said. “We’re having increasing difficulty meeting the community needs as a performing arts venue.” The theater’s spring series of guest artists is almost sold out already, he said, and summer stock productions there traditionally sell out months in advance.

Bishopp guessed that the theater would largely serve a community rather than a college audience, much as the McKinney Theatre does now. Carroll said the college’s goal would be to keep ticket prices as low as possible. “Instead of charging a lot for tickets in a small theater, by having a large venue we can get ticket prices down,” he said.

Bookings at the McKinney, which have included the Preservation Hall Jazz Band of New Orleans and Queen Ida and her Bon Temps Zydeco Band, indicate that the new performing arts center would offer broader and more adventuresome fare than the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, where popular bookings have been largely limited to Tin Pan Alley and Broadway retreads.

The new theater, which would be owned and operated by the college, tentatively is scheduled to occupy 36,000 square feet. School officials hope to develop the project in conjunction with a 10,000-square-foot art gallery/museum that has been on the college’s master plan since 1985.

The planning committee for the arts complex includes representatives of the Newport Harbor Art Museum, the San Juan Capistrano-based Coast Ballet Theatre and the Capistrano Valley Symphony, as well as school officials.

“We are all excited beyond belief at the thought of performing at a complex in South County,” said Larry Rosenberg, co-director of the Coast Ballet Theatre and a member of the committee. “This will benefit all arts patrons in South County. . . . Interest in the arts is just exploding here, and this would be another outlet for our community.”

Bruce Hartman, spokesman for the Orange County Philharmonic Society in Irvine, said his group is “absolutely delighted. We need a theater like that in South County. It’s sort of an untapped community for the arts.”

Frank Messina contributed to this story.