New Role for Old Theater?

If you build it, they will come. That’s the mantra of certain Newport Beach movers and shakers who are committed to turning the 73-year-old Balboa Theater--vacant since 1992--into a performing arts hall.

They are certain that dance troupes; classical, jazz and popular musicians; musicals, plays and children’s productions; and classic and art-house movie screenings will indeed come--and attract more than 35,000 ticket-buyers a year. To accomplish the “build it” part of the equation, the Balboa Performing Arts Theater Foundation is depending on donations.

Renovation has started, aiming for an opening late this year or early in 2001. To transform the 1927-vintage former vaudeville house and movie palace into a theater for live performances, officials of the nonprofit organization say, they need to raise $3 million more.

A final push for the money was scheduled to begin Tuesday night with the unveiling of architectural plans before a group of supporters in Newport Beach.

A plastic model and artists’ renderings of the refurbished theater are meant to impress and “get people jazzed,” said Michele Roberge, executive director of the not-yet-existent theater.

On Monday, Roberge and Dayna Pettit, president of the Balboa Theater foundation, stepped gingerly through its grim present reality. The Balboa is a gutted shell of red brick walls surrounding a floor of sand and rubble. The stage area is a dirty gray pool of standing water. But the natural noonday lighting was lovely: Sunbeams streamed through gaps in the wooden roof, shining a spotlight on floating dust.

“If [prospective donors] drive by now, it’s kind of scary,” admitted Roberge.

However, the two theater spearheads said, walls have been bolstered to meet seismic requirements, and engineering and architectural plans are ready to turn sand, puddles and dust into an intimate, 350-seat theater--the back row just 60 feet from the stage.

All that’s needed is the money.

Pettit, a tiny woman who has lived on the Balboa Peninsula for 27 years and runs a real estate agency there, said that local business owners believe a revitalized Balboa Theater can revive the area near the Balboa Pier.

“This theater will be a pivotal point in downtown. Of course we’ll raise the money,” she said.

In November, Donna Crean and her husband, John, a retired recreational vehicle magnate, gave the project a boost with a $1-million donation.

If fund-raising goes as planned, assorted high rollers need contribute only $1 million more in large donations to the construction fund. The rest, $2 million, is to be raised via what’s been dubbed the “2000 in 2000” campaign--2,000 benefactors, each contributing $1,000, who will have their names etched in glass on a wall of the theater’s lobby.

“I’d say their odds are pretty good,” said Andrew L. Youngquist, a longtime Newport Beach resident whose company, Birtcher Construction Services, is doing the renovation work for a no-profit fee that he says represents about a 15% savings over what a regular, for-profit project would cost.

“I used to go to the Balboa Theater, and it’s something near and dear to our hearts,” Youngquist said. “We specialize in [movie] theater construction throughout the country. . . . This is one where we thought we could give back to the community.”

Craig Smith, an Orange County newcomer who is president of the project’s architectural firm, Holmes & Narver, got involved after he drove by the theater while house-hunting last summer and noticed that it was under renovation by Birtcher. He called his old friend Youngquist and volunteered architectural services for free. His company has designed theaters at theme parks including Disneyland, Disney World and Universal Studios, he said.

Smith, who moved from West Los Angeles to a home five blocks from the Balboa Theater, said that he too was drawn in by fond memories of the theater--especially the night nearly 20 years ago that his then-12-year-old daughter “dragged” him to a midnight showing of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

Pettit, said Smith, “is one determined woman. She’s a fireball, a delightful person. I can’t help but believe they’ll succeed.”

But renovating the theater has proved harder than first envisioned, Pettit said. Early in 1997, the foundation board figured it would cost $1 million--which has ballooned to more than $4 million. They were not arts experts, and they made mistakes such as accepting a donation of 400 attractive, velveteen, rocker-style theater seats from Disney’s studios in Burbank--which had to be stored at a cost of $400 a month and turned out to be useless because they were too big for a 350-seat configuration. The foundation is trying to find a taker for the chairs.

“It’s been like going on a trip and not knowing where you are,” Pettit said. But with experts like Smith and Youngquist involved now, “all of a sudden, [we’re] getting the best travel agent and tour guide in the world.”

Roberge, a veteran arts administrator, will guide the Balboa Performing Arts Theater’s decisions about what to present. The planned mix is 70% live performances, 30% cinema.

Before being hired by the Balboa Theater foundation last July, Roberge worked for four years as chief fund-raiser for the Irvine Barclay Theatre at UC Irvine. She views the Barclay’s early development as a useful model for the Balboa Performing Arts Theater.

“They were very eclectic the first few years. We’ll do the same thing down here,” Roberge said. Once established with imported talent, she said, the Balboa can look to such ambitious ideas as presenting its own productions.

The theater’s intimacy will be its “edge,” Roberge said; she expects to book attractions that are on their way up and not yet big enough for the 750-seat Barclay. She said the Balboa does not expect to woo audiences away from the county’s most established venues, such as South Coast Repertory, the Orange County Performing Arts Center and the Barclay.

“We’ll offer something different,” she said.

The Balboa could provide an answer for small arts groups that currently perform in churches or other “unusual” spaces, said Bonnie Brittain Hall, executive director of Arts Orange County, a nonprofit advocacy group for the local arts scene.

“It’s a great idea, no question about it, and I think there’s going to be a need in the community,” Hall said.

Roberge said she is interested in hosting grass-roots performing groups and has had talks with a couple of small Orange County musical theater organizations about staging shows.

Under the terms of its rent-free lease with the city of Newport Beach, which bought the Balboa Theater for $480,000 at the foundation’s behest, the theater must present at least 100 shows its first year, including film screenings, and 150 a year after that.

Theater officials project attendance at 70% on average--or 245 per performance. Paid admissions would cover 55% of the theater’s estimated $500,000-a-year budget, donations the balance.