Riverside Council OKs Arts Funding

Riverside council members on Tuesday approved $2.25 million to help create the Barbara & Art Culver Center of the Arts, a joint venture with UC Riverside that local leaders hope will serve as a catalyst for downtown revitalization.

“I really feel this is a crowning jewel in a year of activity and determination,” said Councilman Dom Betro. “We will no longer sit on the sidelines as our destiny passes us by.”

Creating a state-of-the-art center, complete with performance and gallery space, is expected to cost nearly $12 million. The city’s commitment of redevelopment dollars allows UC Riverside to tap $7.7 million in state bond funds. The remaining $2.05 million came from a gift from the late Tony Culver, a Riverside philanthropist and photographer whose parents are the namesakes of the center.

Barbara Culver’s father, Harry Hammond, co-owned the Riverside Press-Enterprise for many years. Art Culver was the newspaper’s general manager, co-publisher and president.

UC Riverside acquired the project site -- the historic Rouse department store and two adjacent properties on the Main Street Pedestrian Mall near City Hall -- from the city for $1.7 million in 2002.

When it’s completed in 2009, the center is expected to house film screenings, musical and dance recitals, art seminars, as well as offer space for undergraduate and graduate art studies and faculty research.

“The Culver Arts Center is the right project at the right place at the right time,” said Joel Martin, UC Riverside’s interim dean of the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, before the council’s 7-0 vote.

Frances Culver, Tony Culver’s widow, received congratulatory hugs and handshakes from city officials after the hearing. She said the project embodies her late husband’s love of Riverside, historic buildings and art. Tony Culver made a $5-million commitment to the creation of a university arts center in downtown Riverside before he died in 2002. “The vision was Tony’s. This is going to be so exciting.”