Arts Center to Take Its 1st Bow

When the ribbon is cut Thursday on Canoga Park’s new Madrid Theatre, the West Valley will have something it’s never had before--a genuine community performing arts center. And music director James Domine will have something he’s always wanted--a place where his San Fernando Valley Symphony can rehearse, perform and grow.

“It was my idea even before the earthquake,” says Domine, a Reseda resident who operates the Copy Center in Canoga Park in addition to his musical activities. As an instructor in music at Pierce College, Domine, to use the college’s 400-seat theater, had to compete with other music faculty and members of the drama and speech departments.

“I won’t say we fight over it, but we do.”

So Domine had his eye on two off-campus sites that he thought might work for a performing arts center, the Reseda Theatre and the Pussycat Theatre, an aging Canoga Park movie house that showed skin flicks.

From the start, the latter seemed the likelier bet. When Domine contacted the Pussycat’s owner, he discovered that the tenant was having trouble paying the rent, an apparent victim of the rise of video porn, which was killing the X-rated movie business as more and more consumers viewed tapes at home.

Then the 1994 Northridge earthquake struck, and the Pussycat was damaged beyond repair. Where others saw only a red tag, Domine saw opportunity. He remembers proposing building a new community theater on the site at a post-quake meeting in the office of City Council member Laura Chick, whose district includes the West Valley.

“Laura lit up right away,” Domine recalls. “She knew that this was a winning proposition.”

There were setbacks along the way, including construction delays caused by liquefaction of the soil at the site. “That made the foundation a little more complex,” says architect Art Yanez of the Tarzana firm of Fisher Merriman Sehgal Yanez Inc.

But less than four years later, a modern, two-story, 499-seat theater has replaced the Pussycat at 21622 Sherman Way. The new Madrid, which will be used for concerts, plays and other cultural activities, takes its name from the silent-movie house originally built on the site in 1926.

The original Madrid was one of the first buildings in Canoga Park, Domine says. The new Madrid includes a mosaic by Ojai artist Susan Stinsmuehlen-Amend with a central medallion showing the original brick building.

Although Domine is proud of having proposed the facility, he gives Chick the credit for making it happen. She (along with the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development) obtained a $3.5-million federal grant to build the theater and revitalize the six-block business district surrounding it. The money was part of a $30-million grant to Los Angeles by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration.

Of the $3.5 million, about $2.95 million was invested in the theater itself. The rest of the grant provides for new sidewalks, trees, lighting and handsome new signs (already in place), as well as parking and street improvements.

“Talk is cheap, but money is what builds buildings,” Domine says.

Chick, who was not available for comment, released a statement about the new facility. “This is an exciting time for Canoga Park, the whole West Valley and, indeed, the entire city of Los Angeles,” she said. “The Madrid Theatre is all about affordable and accessible art to the residents of L.A. I can’t wait.”

Built of concrete block, the new theater is sheathed with antique-gray metal panels. One of the unusual features of the building, architect Yanez said, is the large number of seats it boasts, given it occupies a relatively small, 50-foot-by-140-foot lot.

“People are calling it the largest performing arts center on the smallest lot,” he says.

The building also encourages theatergoers to interact with people on the street, Yanez says. There is a balcony above the marquee that looks out on Sherman Way, and the marquee also serves as an awning for people who leave the theater for the street during intermissions.

As an observer of the political process that made the Madrid a reality, Domine thinks the project had a couple of things going for it. Despite the presence of a respectable Antique Row, the Canoga Park business district was relatively shabby, he notes. And the Pussycat itself was considered a blight by much of the largely Latino community.

As a result, there was little or no NIMBY-ism (or “Not in My Backyard”) on the part of local residents.

“Nobody was going to argue with the upgrade,” says Domine, who serves on the board of the Friends of the Madrid Theatre.

The other major plus was that, although the surrounding neighborhood is not especially affluent, nearby areas are. As a feasibility study by the city’s Cultural Affairs Department pointed out, the only performing arts centers within 20 miles of the Madrid, with the exception of the modest theater at Pierce, are the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza and the Smothers Theater at Pepperdine University in Malibu. Yet 3.2 million people live within a 20-mile radius of the Madrid. The study concluded that a new theater could draw up to 50,000 people annually.

Designed to serve mostly community groups, the new facility is no threat to larger cultural venues elsewhere, according to Domine.

“The Philharmonic couldn’t perform there,” he says. “There’s room for about 60 orchestra musicians. You could probably cram 100 people on the stage if you were crafty about it.”

Instead, the new theater is just large enough to be economically viable. As Domine, a veteran of cultural funding wars, explains, if you have fewer than 499 seats, you can’t bring in enough money to get matching grants, the lifeblood of today’s cultural institutions.

As a musician, Domine confesses that his main concern was the new theater’s acoustics.

“I wanted good sound without amplification,” he says. “You can always make a sound louder, but you can’t make a bad sound good.”

He admits that the results are probably better for music than for theater.

“What’s good for music isn’t really good for spoken word,” he explains. “It’s a little more echo-y than you want for spoken word.” One disappointment, he says, is that the thrust stage is made of plywood, not the hardwood he had hoped for.

“Wood resonates. Plywood doesn’t. Plywood can buzz.”

The new Madrid will be operated by the city’s Cultural Affairs Department. According to Lee Sweet, business and development manager of the Performing Arts Division, the theater will be primarily a rental facility, available to music, theater, dance and other cultural groups.

The first regular performance scheduled for the new Madrid is a concert Dec. 12 by the Angeles Chorale’s Children’s Chorus. Other musical groups have been booked throughout December and January.

Sweet predicted that the Madrid will eventually become a popular venue, as local impresarios are convinced that the state-of-the-art equipment works properly and that the space draws audiences.

“What usually happens with theater is people hang back until they see if they can fill the house,” Sweet explains.

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Madrid Facts

WHAT: Madrid Theatre, the first community performing arts center in the West Valley

WHERE: 21622 Sherman Way, Canoga Park

CAPACITY: 499 seats, can be converted to a 247-seat space with orchestra pit

SQUARE FOOTAGE: 10,906

COST: About $2.95 million

ARCHITECT: Art Yanez of the Tarzana firm of Fisher Merriman Sehgal Yanez.

PROJECTED OPERATING COST: $250,000 annually

MANAGED BY: City of Los Angeles’ Cultural Affairs Dept.

WHO WILL PERFORM THERE: Community cultural organizations and others that will rent the space