Area Growth Is Pushing the Arts to Front-Row Seat : Culture: In a region already strong in the performance arts, several cities have taken ambitious steps to satisfy new appetites.

In the final years before the millennium, there will be a fundamental and revolutionary shift in leisure time and spending priorities. During the 1990s, the arts will gradually replace sports as society’s primary leisure activity. This extraordinary megatrend is already visible in an explosion in the visual and performing arts that is already under way.

From “Megatrends 2000” by John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene

In North County, futurists Naisbitt and Aburdene would find their predictions in full bloom. When singer Melissa Manchester opens the Poway Center for the Performing Arts on May 12 during a black-tie fund-raiser, the curtain will also rise on a new age of culture here.

As the northern end of San Diego County has become a metropolis unto itself--a sea of people between San Diego proper and Orange County, with a growing appetite for the arts--several cities in the region have taken ambitious steps.

Poway’s new $8.4-million, 800-seat theater--already booked through its first two months with Ben Vereen, the Seattle Repertory Theatre, the San Diego Symphony, Mel Torme and the Poway Performing Arts Company’s production of A. R. Gurney’s “The Dining Room”--is only the beginning:

* In 1993, the city of Escondido will complete the $60-million second phase of its downtown Civic Center, including 1,500- and 400-seat theaters and three art galleries.

* Vista hopes to build its own cultural center to complement the 2,000-seat Moonlight Amphitheatre in Brengle Terrace Park. The Moonlight drew crowds averaging 900 people to last summer’s four locally produced Broadway musicals, according to Jim Porter, director of parks and community services for the city. Vista is planning a small community theater, followed by a 600- to 800-seat performing arts theater, plus gallery space and rooms for other arts-related uses.

* The new California State University campus in San Marcos, the first buildings of which will be completed by 1992, may include a performing arts complex by 1995 or ’96.

* La Jolla developer Hal Kolker is intent on building a 25,000-seat amphitheater at El Camino Real and Oceanside Boulevard in Oceanside, despite petition signatures from more than 1,600 area residents who fear the venture would bring excessive noise and traffic.

* New civic centers in both Escondido and Oceanside are the most visible evidence of a new urbanism that is likely to spur the arts in North County. Not content to settle for run-of-the-mill architecture, both cities held competitions to select architects. Escondido’s City Hall, completed in 1988, and Oceanside’s Civic Center, finished this year, represent some of the county’s best architecture in years.

None of the new facilities would be moving ahead without cold, hard numbers favoring their eventual success. The facts are fairly mind-boggling.

“What you’re getting is a profile that, in terms of the arts, is very promising,” said Diane Annala, who until recently served as a consultant to Escondido on marketing and fund raising for the city’s performing-arts complex.

North County grew at a feverish pace during the 1970s and ‘80s. From 1970-85, the region’s population grew 105%--roughly twice the growth rate of the county as a whole, according to a report prepared for Escondido by Stamford, Conn.-based Theatre Projects Consultants.

According to a study commissioned by the Ernest W. Hahn Co. before its construction of the North County Fair shopping mall in Escondido, the mall’s market consists of about 284,000 consumers with an average household income of $38,000, in an area extending in four directions to Ramona, Rancho California, Vista and Rancho Penasquitos.

Last year’s Sandag figures indicate there are 197,000 North County households with incomes of $35,000 to $50,000. According to the Theater Projects study, the potential audience for the arts--within 20 minutes of the Escondido Civic Center--is not only well-heeled but well-educated: 60.7% have a high school education or some college courses, well above the statewide and national averages.

In many ways, North County already has a strong arts scene, heavier on performing than on such visual arts as painting and sculpture.

The Lawrence Welk Resort Theatre in Escondido sells out its weekend shows and averages 80% attendance year-round with locally produced mainstream musicals and dramas such as “Fiddler on the Roof” and “The Odd Couple.”

There are several community and college theater groups as well. The Patio Playhouse in Escondido will present six plays for adults and three for children this year in its 200-seat auditorium in The Vineyard shopping center. The group would like to move to Escondido’s new community theater in 1993, but so far the city has given the thespians a cold shoulder, offering only two weekends per year, according to Ken Seabold, president of the theater’s board of directors.

In Solana Beach, the 8-year-old North Coast Repertory Theater will present seven plays this year in its 194-seat theater.

For the most part, however, North County’s visual arts scene is oriented toward fairs and galleries that cater to middle-of-the-road tastes rather than cutting-edge fine art.

“Maybe we’re a little bit far behind the times, but there’s getting to be more of a scene, more artists, more studios, “ said Barry Reed, a glass artist who lives in Vista and has taught art at Palomar College in San Marcos for 14 years. “We have four art glass studios just in North County, and I don’t think there are any in San Diego.”

The 20-year-old Boehm Gallery at Palomar College has long been considered representative of the state of the visual arts in North County. Shows there have been reviewed in national magazines, and the gallery is consistently praised by San Diego critics for its exhibits, such as the current retrospective by nationally known San Diego painter Faiya Fredman.

The Felicita Foundation Gallery, under the direction of San Diego artist Reesey Shaw, is leading the way for visual arts in Escondido, presenting shows ranging from Mexican folk art to Tiffany glass to contemporary surrealist paintings. The gallery is expected to move to the city’s new arts center.

Local governments, seeing the benefits not only to their constituents but to their economies, are stepping up their arts efforts. Leading the way in North County is Carlsbad, which gave the arts a higher profile in 1986 by hiring Connie Beardsley as manager of its new Arts Office.

Although Carlsbad, with a population of 62,000, is substantially smaller than Escondido (99,000) or Oceanside (117,597), it is setting the pace for its larger cousins with broad arts programming.

Beardsley has two staff members and a budget this year of $256,000 that goes toward filling the city with outdoor jazz performances, public sculpture, theater and other arts experiences aimed at residents of all ages.

In addition, Carlsbad already has committed more than $250,000 toward the pursuit of public art. The first commissioned piece, artist Lloyd Hamrol’s $75,000 “Crown Lair,” is a series of rock-like walls in Stagecoach Park near La Costa Avenue and Rancho Santa Fe Road. San Diego artist James Hubbell created a bird-of-paradise mosaic of tile, terrazzo and concrete at Elm Avenue and Carlsbad Boulevard, and has designed a pair of gates to mark the entry to Carlsbad on Elm Avenue near Interstate 5.

Carlsbad’s artists-in-residence program recruits artists to spend a week visiting local schools, senior citizens’ centers and other sites.

“I think our arts scene is growing; I think it’s coming,” Beardsley said. The city recently received a $30,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to assess what citizens want in the way of arts and culture.

“I hope it will give us some feeling of what is right for Carlsbad,” Beardsley said. “We’re not San Diego; we will never be that size or able to afford a symphony orchestra like San Diego, but we can have a lot of really outstanding art.”

When it comes to public art, Escondido is matching Carlsbad stride for stride. Its first public art pieces, selected in juried competitions, are now being completed: Marjorie Nodelman’s “Three Windmills,” to be installed at 2nd Avenue and Quince Street, and a site-specific work by Christine Oatman consisting of bronze eucalyptus leaves that are large enough to sit on, to be installed beneath eucalyptus trees in Kit Carson Park.

In July, Oceanside will hold a juried exhibition at its Civic Center. If the City Council allocates money for public art during its June budgeting process, the show may be used as an opportunity to select art for the new center.

Although Oceanside has no formal public arts program, Escondido mandates that developers of projects in its 3,000-acre downtown redevelopment area spend .25% of their construction budgets for art; there’s a good chance the council will increase that to 1% sometime this month, said Marilyn Whisenand, executive director of the city’s Community Development Commission. Since the fee was instituted in 1986, the city has collected about $720,000. Plans are in the works for public art within the coming arts complex.

In Vista, artist and grade school art teacher Cynthia Moore founded the Vista Initiative for the Visual Arts early last year to respond to a growing appetite for culture there.

“There was no cultural arts group,” she said. “My purpose was to promote and develop fine arts here and in all of North County.” Moore sees a new Vista that probably reflects the overall transformation of North County cities from small, suburban towns to more sophisticated urban areas.

“Our demographics are really changing,” she said. “There’s a tremendous influx of people from Orange County and Los Angeles, and they’re looking for cultural events. There wasn’t much going on except the Moonlight Amphitheatre.”

So far, VIVA, as Moore calls it, has found ways to present art even though Vista has no gallery. She’s held exhibitions at local businesses and in a retirement home. Although the pieces so far have been mostly by local artists, she’s working on a show of nationally known works juried by nationally known arts figures, to be presented sometime next year.

One as-yet-unanswered question is whether corporations and wealthy individuals will be willing to provide the financial support the new facilities will require for construction and operation.

So far in San Diego, donors have been generous, although they often step in at the last minute, when organizations are in peril.

The San Diego Symphony was recently rescued with a $2.5-million anonymous gift to clear the debt on its new downtown Symphony Hall. The La Jolla Playhouse announced a $703,000 debt and a $1-million capital campaign last October, and by year’s end had raised $560,000, including $400,000 from the Joan B. Kroc Foundation.

Poway needs to raise $1.3 million to complement the public sources of funding for its theater project, and has hired Cliff Underwood, president of The Underwood Group, a San Diego marketing company that has raised money for arts organizations, to do it. He foresees no difficulty.

“During our feasibility study, we found real serious support for a performing arts center,” Underwood said. “We interviewed 50 very prominent people, and no one told us it was a bad idea. They all thought it would add a significant cultural dimension to Poway. We also sent a direct-mail survey to about 20,000 residents and got a 25% to 30% response. Of those, 55% said they would give money to a campaign, and 60% said they would attend.

“Poway won’t compete directly with Escondido for arts money,” Underwood said, adding that his primary fund-raising targets will be Poway-area development, construction and real estate businesses, “where a performing arts center would add to the quality of life available to users of their products. Anyway, our philosophy on these kinds of campaigns is to deal primarily with individuals, not corporations.”

The city of Poway and the Poway Performing Arts Company will share the theater with adjacent Poway High School, which will use it several nights a year.

Underwood is also bidding for the job of raising $2 million toward Vista’s proposed community theater. And, sometime before the 1993 opening of its new Center for the Arts, Escondido will begin raising money toward a $9-million endowment to be used to meet the center’s estimated $800,000 annual operating costs, according to Whisenand.

Already, development company Signal Landmark has agreed to donate $250,000 over five years. The first $50,000 check was presented to Escondido’s Community Development Commission last October.

Officials in both Poway and Escondido acknowledge the risk of their undertakings. But they are confident they’ve done their homework when it comes to community support.

“We’re not in direct competition with Poway at 800 seats,” said Rolf Gunnarson, assistant executive director of the development commission in Escondido. “There will be qualitative and quantitative differences to our facilities.”

With 1,500 seats, a design by internationally known architect Charles Moore and all the luxury appointments that $22 million can buy, Escondido’s larger theater will be used primarily to lure national touring groups. A special system of sound-absorbing curtains and adjustable panels will tailor the acoustics to each group’s needs.

“You might get symphonies from Chicago, Los Angeles or even San Diego,” consultant Annala said. “We’re talking about smaller ballet companies, not the American Ballet Theatre and the Joffrey but, say, the Oakland Ballet. Orchestras might send a chamber ensemble instead of a full philharmonic.”