Finding the Paths to a New Artists Village : Community: The Great Santa Ana Arts Hunt on Saturday offers a preview of the future downtown cultural scene.

As the creation of a thriving artists colony in downtown Santa Ana edges closer to reality, its backers hope to raise awareness of the city’s growing cultural scene with the Great Santa Ana Arts Hunt on Saturday.

Some key elements of the long-planned Artists Village, which began taking form about a year ago, have been delayed. But millions of dollars in financing for other facets have come through, a dozen artists are now working in the historic Santora Building on North Broadway, and four galleries are scheduled to open in June.

“We’re still in the beginning of a very big picture,” said Don Cribb, founder of the Santa Ana Council of Arts & Culture (SACAC) and the village’s visionary, but “Santa Ana has an enormous opportunity here.”

The Great Santa Ana Arts Hunt, sponsored by SACAC and the city, will include free presentations by such troupes as St. Joseph Ballet, Alternative Repertory Theatre and the Orange County Crazies, all based in Santa Ana. The Bowers Museum of Cultural Art and Kidseum will waive admission. Several artists will open their studios for demonstrations and discussion. Buses will transport visitors at no charge from one location to another.

(The Santa Ana-based Pacific Symphony performed Hector Armienta’s “Ode to Peace” with Santa Ana school students during a related SACAC Arts Week of various school activities, which ends today.)

City officials see the Artists Village, which will include cafes and spaces for artists to live and work in, as a way to help revitalize a depressed tract and draw from an influx of people anticipated when the new federal courthouse opens nearby in about three years.

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Opening of a new home for the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, considered one of the new colony’s anchors, has been delayed repeatedly. But “any day” the city should approve building plans for OCCCA’s site at Sycamore and 2nd streets--at 10,000 square feet, about 10 times the size of its current south Santa Ana site. The city bought the property with $300,000 in federal block grant funds, said Cynthia Nelson, executive director of the Community Development Agency.

“We’re hoping to move into the building by the fall,” said Mike McGee, OCCCA board president.

The city also has modified zoning to permit artists’ live-work spaces, Nelson said, and has been trying to set up such venues with the owner of a building across from the Santora Building. Twelve artists are now working there, another six are in lease negotiations, and four galleries are slated to open, said Gil Marrero, senior marketing associate at Voit Commercial, the Irvine real estate firm that manages the building.

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In addition, Alternative Repertory Theatre has entered negotiations for a move to new quarters in the Santora Building that could double its current 1,200-square-foot space in a south Santa Ana industrial park.

“Ideally we’d like to start next season in the new place,” ART spokesman Gary Christensen said. “But that may be too soon for us.”

The troupe envisions a fund-raising campaign to raise roughly $100,000 for a projected expansion. “It would take us a step up from mom-and-pop organization,” he said. “But moving by next season would mean having to get the campaign up and running over the next six months instead of 18 months, which was our original timetable.”

Daniel Arvizu, who recruited 35 artists to create a mural around the federal building construction site last month, will be opening two Santora galleries. One of those, the Artegeo Gallery, will be nonprofit, he said, and reach out to inner-city residents with such activities as artist-in-resident programs for students.

The Artists Village, he said, will give local artists a place akin to New York’s Soho where they “can live and work and dialogue. There hasn’t been a community like that in Orange County,” Arvizu said. “Laguna Beach really doesn’t address contemporary art.”

Another key element of the fledgling community--a Cal State Fullerton center for graduate art students--has moved ahead now that the city has $4 million in hand for the project. City redevelopment and federal block grant funds will be used to buy and renovate the Grand Central Building on Broadway, in the heart of the Artists Village.

The Santa Ana City Council must approve the final plans next month, said Nelson, who is optimistic it will do so. “There’s a real strong commitment to the arts on their part.”

According to McGee, who also is director of Cal State Fullerton’s art gallery, plans call for the 45,000-square-foot center to open in fall, 1997, with live-work spaces, exhibition space, a small theater, a computer lab and a darkroom. It expects to be financially self-sustaining through lease of a restaurant and sales from a printmaking studio, a gallery and classes.

* The Great Santa Ana Arts Hunt, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, begins at the Arts Hunt kiosk on the 2nd Street mall on 2nd Street between Sycamore Street and North Broadway, Santa Ana. Bus and event schedules will be available there. Buses and events are free. (714) 542-6579. Times staff writer Jan Herman contributed to this report.