Company to See Its Name in Lights at Arts Plaza

In Los Angeles, there’s Staples Center. In San Francisco, Pacific Bell Park. And soon, in Thousand Oaks, there will be the Countrywide Performing Arts Center.

With a $4.25-million pledge, Calabasas-based Countrywide Financial Corp. joins a growing league of corporate sponsors that pay to see their names on sports parks and entertainment venues. In fact, Countrywide will soon see its name in brushed aluminum on two walls of the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza.

The pledge, to be paid over five years, is the largest ever received by the Alliance for the Arts, the official fund-raising arm of the Civic Arts Plaza.

The alliance is attempting to raise $30 million by 2005 for ongoing productions at the plaza.

The new pledge brings the total to $22 million.

The money will be disbursed in seven areas: artistic production, outreach, grants for performers, endowment, capital improvement, scholarships and resource development, which includes administrative operations.

In return for the pledge, the plaza’s two theaters, the Fred Kavli Theatre and the Scherr Forum Theatre, will become the Countrywide Performing Arts Center, alliance President Patricia Moore Jones said

The entire complex, which includes City Hall and the grounds, will still be known as the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, Jones said.

Anne McCallion, senior managing director of operations at Countrywide, said the donation is “the largest contribution we have ever made, by a wide margin. That makes it all the more exciting.”

The company, which employs 30,000 people nationwide, has about 7,500 workers in Calabasas, Agoura, Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley, she said.

“The Civic Arts Plaza is the largest venue between San Francisco and Los Angeles,” McCallion said.

“It’s also in a central location for our employees.”

In addition, McCallion said, “the quality of the performances and the outreach programs are something we’re very supportive of.”

Theaters director Tom Mitze, who manages the 1,800-seat Kavli Theatre and the 400-seat Scherr Forum, said Countrywide will have two signs on the building, similar to the Civic Arts Plaza sign.

Officials expect the signs to be up in the next couple of months. The name Countrywide will be in brushed aluminum, and the words Performing Arts Center will be smaller and in a lighted box.

City officials are not concerned about having a business name on the building.

“In this economy, I just thought it was a terrific, generous offer to us,” Mayor Pro Tem Robert Wilson Sr. said.

And Mitze and Jones said the name blends with Thousand Oaks’ vision of itself.

“We are kind of out in the country,” Jones said.

Mitze agreed. “It’s a perfect name. It sort of says what Thousand Oaks is ... besides the fact that it’s four-and-a-quarter million dollars.”