Not a Good Move for Some Arts Groups : Organizations Must Seek New Homes as the Anaheim Cultural Center Becomes History

People hoping for a reprieve for the Anaheim Cultural Arts Center need only check the building’s marquee for a sign of how efforts to save the center fared:

“All fixtures and office furniture for sale. Ask inside.”

After 20 years of providing a space for community art classes and exhibits, folk concerts, plays and dance classes, the center is history. Its lease has run out, and the building has reverted to the Anaheim City School District. Hit by severe overcrowding in its 21 elementary schools, the district will decide in the coming months whether to convert the 61-year-old former schoolhouse into district offices or tear it down to make way for additional classrooms.

A newly formed Cultural Arts Center board had offered a last-ditch plan to save the center but succeeded only in gaining an extra week to finish moving things out. On Tuesday, the last day of the center’s lease, volunteers removed some of the remaining office furniture and supplies as Sylvia Bula, the center’s volunteer director since 1986, gathered the center’s records.

Items belonging to the Anaheim Foundation for Culture and the Arts, which operated the center, will be placed in storage as the foundation board shifts its efforts from saving the center to finding a new home, Bula said. Of the independent groups that used the center, some have found new homes, while some have had to put their activities on hold.

Among those at least temporarily homeless now are the Occasional String Band (see accompanying story), a gem and mineral club, and the American Children’s Theater, which offered regular weekend productions. The Anaheim Art Assn. has moved its summer Art Reach program for children to the Anaheim Plaza Mall, but the shopping center is due to close in January.

A mask-making program led by Tony Hernandez and Miriam Tait, which featured a lauded workshop for “at risk” teens in local continuation high schools, is also looking for a new place. Tait is talking to city school districts in an effort to keep the program alive.

The center also hosted a wide variety of dance classes. The old suspended wooden floor offered a resiliency not often found in modern buildings, making it ideal for dance. Adeline Gonzales, who offered ballet folklorico lessons to children ages 4 to 12, fought back tears Tuesday as she stood on the steps during a final visit.

Gonzales had moved her twice-a-week lessons in traditional Mexican dance to the center a year ago from a series of smaller sites, and watched her roster of children almost double to 66. Hoping to keep disadvantaged youth out of trouble, she gave the lessons free and even made or purchased many of the costumes.

“This was their place, their sense of belonging, their sense of self-esteem,” Gonzales said. In addition to teaching the youngsters traditional dance forms, Gonzales said she tried to “be a social part of their lives.” Her young troupe has performed at festivals, at business grand openings and at hospitals.

For the time being, Gonzales plans to move the lessons to the back yard of a private home, but she worries that some children will have to drop out because of transportation and other difficulties.

John Craig, president of the Ana-Modjeska Players, and Ed Kirkland, an actor in the community theater troupe, were taking props from backstage at the center and loading them onto a truck Tuesday afternoon. The group is one of the lucky ones: It has found new stage and storage space at the Fairmont Private School in Anaheim.

Craig is also the head of Stanton’s community theater, which is in temporary hiatus while a new theater facility is being built as part of the city’s new civic center, due for completion in April. Craig is working with the Ana-Modjeska Players in the interim.

“I think it’s a shame that the city of Anaheim, as big as it is, hasn’t done more for culture,” he said, charging that Anaheim is more “sports-oriented” than culture-oriented. The city is building a new indoor sports arena near Anaheim Stadium, even though it has yet to line up any professional teams for it.

“Stanton is a poor little town compared to Anaheim, yet they do so much more,” Craig said. Bula also pronounced herself “saddened” that the Anaheim didn’t “dedicate itself to saving this building for us, or building a permanent home for the arts.”

The Anaheim Cultural Arts Center building, even after minor renovations in recent years, is somewhat shabby at best. Structural deficiencies and a lack of heating or air conditioning would cost an estimated $2 million to remedy. The center foundation had offered to foot the bill. But the school district, strapped for cash as well as classroom space, decided it could not afford to keep the building for the $1 a year it has charged for the past two decades.

Some people associated with the center have discussed the possibility of constructing an entirely new facility, but there are no specific plans.