Markey Seeks Panel on Arts Plaza Improvement

Mayor Mike Markey wants to bring the various groups working on sprucing up the Civic Arts Plaza to the same table and is asking the City Council to form a new committee to review possible improvements and sponsorship opportunities.

In a memo to the council, Markey wrote that there are now four groups considering plans to better the much-talked-about City Hall and performing arts center--the Thousand Oaks Arts Commission, the Civic Arts Plaza Board of Governors, the Alliance for the Arts and the council itself.

He is expect to ask the council tonight to form an ad hoc committee made up of two members from each panel to review the plans and make recommendations to the full City Council.

“Each of these groups is acting independently,” Markey wrote. “It would seem appropriate and prudent for the City Council to create a [committee] to fully review all options and present the City Council with a single, united recommendation regarding building identification, the copper curtain, and a naming opportunity for the Civic Arts Plaza.”

Currently, the council has authorized:

* The Alliance for the Arts, a nonprofit group that raises money to support performances at the theaters, to seek a $5-million donor for whom the entire Civic Arts Plaza would be named. The building’s two theaters were earlier named after businessman Charles E. Probst in exchange for a $2-million donation.

* The Arts Commission to look for a solution to the nagging problem of the copper curtain, the unpopular public artwork hanging from the east side of the building facing the Ventura Freeway. Armed with a $10,000 budget to somehow “enhance” the artwork--a sum that would not even cover the scaffolding needed to reach its copper strips--the commission has already studied the dilemma and offered a series of recommendations.

* City officials to spend $75,000 to install signs identifying the Civic Arts Plaza from the Ventura Freeway side of the complex. The building has been bereft of identification save for the copper curtain--which was intended to symbolize the thespian goings-on inside--leaving many commuters puzzled.

Also, the Civic Arts Plaza Board of Governors, a group made up mostly of wealthy donors that oversees cultural programming at the center, has a signage committee that has in the past reviewed various issues related to identifying the complex.

Markey believes that all the groups need to come together.

“We need to get everyone on the same page and see where we want to go from here,” Markey said in an interview Monday. “My original thought was, ‘It makes no sense to go at this the way we’re doing.’ ”