Where Are They Now? 6 Stories Revisited : Antelope Valley: Lancaster looks toward a spring opening, and Palmdale has plans for a new theater.

Construction of a 700-seat performing arts theater in Lancaster, featured in an April article about theaters in the Antelope Valley, has remained almost on schedule even in the wake of a tragic accident.

In October, during a tour of the construction site by members of the Lancaster Woman’s Club, 87-year-old Viola Parr died after falling 20 feet from a staircase into the orchestra pit. “The other women who knew her knew that she was very devoted to the arts,” Susan Davis, the city’s cultural arts superintendent, said. “They said there was no way she would have wanted this project to be stalled by what took place.”

Since the accident, there have been no tours of the Lancaster Performing Arts Center, scheduled to be completed in spring.

Davis was hired in September to oversee operation of the city-owned arts center. A former management assistant to the city manager of Lancaster, she has had no previous experience in running a theater.

She said negotiations are under way to bring a one-person show to the theater for the gala opening, followed by several other acts, including a touring opera company. She declined to name any of the proposed performers.

Because the theater will be by far the biggest and best equipped in the Antelope Valley, Davis said she has been besieged with inquiries from community performance groups, schools, churches and local dance studios. No policy has been set on how much community groups will be charged to use the facility.

Meanwhile, plans to build a nearly identically sized theater in nearby Palmdale have been drastically overhauled--twice. In June, the City Council decided to scrap plans to build the theater because of the ever-rising estimated cost of the proposed project, a figure that could go as high as $8 million. Instead, it voted to renovate a 40-year-old, 400-seat high school auditorium.

But in October community groups convinced the council that the renovation would cost nearly as much as a new 400-seat theater. The council voted to go forward with developing plans for the new, scaled-down theater on land donated by a local developer.

David Milligan, head of the community arts group that used its own money to hire an architectural firm to do the design, said the next step is to have the council approve the design. He said he hopes that the Palmdale theater will be ready to open in two years.