College Theater Wins Approval ‘in Principle’

A proposal to build a theater with a capacity of 1,500 to 2,000 seats at Saddleback College has taken a tentative step forward, college President Constance M. Carroll said Tuesday.

The college trustees “agreed in principle with the scope and function” of an ambitious campus arts complex recommended Monday by a planning committee. There was, however, no discussion of cost estimates.

“A year from now, after an architect has been selected and we have a design, we’ll know better how much it will cost,” Carroll said. “We have selected a figure of $10 million, but that is just for planning purposes. It could fluctuate.”

By comparison, the 750-seat Irvine Theatre is being built now at UC Irvine for $17.6 million. Theater experts who asked not to be named were highly doubtful that a professional facility of the size recommended in the Saddleback proposal could be built for less than $30 million, particularly if construction were not to begin for several years.

Carroll said the college hopes to file preliminary architectural plans in 1991 with the State Chancellor’s Office of Community Colleges. The $10-million estimate that Saddleback is using for the overall arts complex also includes the proposed construction of an art gallery, sculpture garden, rehearsal studio and administrative offices.

In the meantime, the planning committee is considering whether to recommend an architectural-design competition for the complex or simply to seek low bids. The college trustees will make that decision in July, Carroll said.

If a competition were held, it would delay “the whole planning schedule by a year,” Carroll added. Thus, preliminary architectural plans would not be filed with the state until 1992. Nevertheless, the committee is leaning toward a competition, Carroll said, because it wants “not only a functional building” but also one with “a design signature.”

Carroll said that “in the best of all possible worlds” the theater might be open by 1996, depending on such variables as future state budgets, construction priorities at 107 other community colleges and private fund raising for a capital campaign, which has yet to begin.