Palmdale Scraps Theater Because of Rising Costs

Troubled by rising project costs and an expected slump in the economy, Palmdale officials have scrapped plans to build a 700-seat theater and now hope to refurbish a 40-year-old school auditorium for half the price.

The City Council voted 3 to 2 to back away from the theater project Thursday night after learning that the estimated cost of the proposed 25,000-square-foot theater center had increased from $4.7 million to $8 million in the past eight months.

That news, combined with projections of a slowdown in the city’s economic growth, led the council to instead budget $4 million to transform the boarded-up Maryott Auditorium into a modest, 400-seat, 12,000-square-foot venue.

Council members acknowledged that they were no longer aiming for a lofty, city gateway-type project that might attract big-time theater groups headed for Los Angeles. Instead, they said, they will settle for a small arena to serve the city’s own theater groups.

The immediate effect of the council’s change in direction, the latest chapter in the city’s turbulent six-year quest for a theater, is more delays. City officials had spent years working on plans for a more elaborate renovation of the old building. But last December, a previous City Council halted that in favor of building the new theater.

Thursday’s council decision infuriated city theater activists. The city budget already included extra money for the new theater center. Yet many residents applauded the council’s change of heart, saying the extra money could be better spent on a new library or more parks.

“The Maryott isn’t my idea of what we want to have. But I think it will suffice in the short run,” said Councilwoman Janis Hamm, a past supporter of the new theater center. She and newly elected council members James Ledford and James Root provided the key votes for the council’s reversal.

City officials blamed the rapid escalation in the theater center’s cost on several factors, including nearly a year of inflation from the prior estimate and changes in the project. They said the earlier estimate failed to account for the cost of items other than the building itself, such as a parking lot.

The three council members questioned the city’s ability to afford such a costly project and warned that it could drain other city programs. Ledford and Root questioned Palmdale’s need for a new 700-seat theater when the neighboring city of Lancaster is building a similar project.

“I can’t reconcile in my mind the need for two 700-seat theaters,” Root said. The cost of the 725-seat theater in Lancaster, about 10 miles away, has generated debate. Palmdale officials argue that it will cost up to $13 million, although Lancaster officials are saying it will cost from $10 million to $12 million.

Palmdale’s now-abandoned theater center project stood to cost less because Los Angeles developer Ron Ordin had agreed to donate the land, a 5.7-acre parcel along the Antelope Valley Freeway, if the city built a theater there. In contrast, the old auditorium is located in an older area near downtown.

“This has been sabotaged at the city level. I am demanding answers as to why,” said an angry David Milligan, executive director of the Antelope Valley Cultural Foundation, after the council’s vote. Since 1984, the foundation has been the prime supporter of the theater plan.

Milligan said the city’s scaled-down plan to renovate the Maryott Auditorium will not be adequate for Palmdale’s two theater groups. And by the time the city complies with fire, seismic, handicapped access and other codes, he predicted that the project will cost almost as much as a new theater.

Other residents, though, backed the council’s decision. Some argued that the plan to build a new theater would have saddled the city with hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in operating costs. Others said the costly project would only have benefited a few theater devotees.