Palmdale Targets Shopping Center and Theater in Redevelopment Plans : Renovation: The City Council OKs a $2.5-million budget to transform the Maryott Auditorium next spring, but many plans will be deferred.

Palmdale officials promised Friday that work will begin next spring to transform an old city auditorium into a new community theater, even though the recession has reduced the project to only 348 seats and a $2.5-million budget.

The City Council voted 5-0 Thursday night to allocate the money for improvements to the 40-year-old Maryott Auditorium in the downtown area. A contract will be awarded next spring, said deputy public works director Doug Dykhouse.

Constrained by tight finances, the city’s latest project design will defer much of the previously planned new construction, including permanent dressing areas, a banquet area and part of the public lobby. Those can be added later if the city allocates more money, Dykhouse said.

Until recently, the city had been considering a 400-seat design estimated to cost $4 million to $5 million, including new construction.

But after the council decided to cut the project’s budget in July, the scope dropped to 348 seats and the focus shifted to renovation.

The latest design represents the least costly version of the project since it surfaced in 1984 with plans to renovate the Maryott.

Along the way, the city approved and then abandoned plans to build an entirely new 700-seat theater on a different site for up to $8 million.

Because that proposal is now dead, the council also voted to return the 5.7-acre parcel along the Antelope Valley Freeway that Los Angeles developer Ronald Ordin gave the city in 1989 so the city could build a theater there.

Ordin was shot to death in Los Angeles in May, 1991. The land will be returned to his company.

City officials said the Maryott, a former school auditorium on 10th Street East several blocks east of City Hall, ultimately will be used for community theater groups and other performances.

Now vacant and little-used, the auditorium has been boarded up for years.

Of the $2.5-million budget, Dykhouse said the city is expected to come up with about $2 million and the remaining $500,000 will come from the Antelope Valley Cultural Foundation.

The foundation is a nonprofit group that first proposed the project eight years ago and would get primary use of the theater.