HUNTINGTON BEACH : Arts Center Receives $54,000 Donation

The city’s proposed Arts Center has received a $54,000 donation from a new civic organization, the Founders Committee.

The Founders Committee is a nonprofit group dedicated to raising money for the center, said Naida Osline, a cultural affairs staff member for the city. “The money they donated to the city will be used to help renovate the building the city is providing for the new Arts Center,” she said.

The city has purchased the old Southern California Edison Building at 538 Main St. for use as a public arts center. But the estimated $750,000 cost of renovating that structure is being raised by private groups, an effort being coordinated by the Arts Center Foundation.

Osline said that so far, the money raised by private groups, including the Founders Committee, totals about $200,000. She said the goal is to have all the money raised by next fall and the renovation completed by spring, 1992.

Eunice Nicholson, co-chair of the Founder’s Committee, said the group was launched in August and held its fund-raising activity in October. “We invited people to the building which is to become the Arts Center, and we had a wall in the building designated as a founders’ wall,” she said. “We invited people to pledge $1,000 each and to then sign their names on that founders’ wall.”

The $54,000 raised during that event was given to the City Council on Dec. 17. Mayor Peter M. Green, in accepting the donation for the center, said: “People like you make this a better city in which to live. We so cherish having people like you working to help our city.”

Nicholson said the Founders Committee is finding enthusiastic support in the community for the proposed center. “We want to get more people involved in this effort for the new Arts Center so that the effort encompasses the whole city,” she said. “We want to show the City Council that the citizens of Huntington Beach are very much interested in having an arts center.”