ARTS GROUP PUTS NEW FACE ON A.V. CIVIC CENTER : ARTS GROUP RENOVATING BUILDINGS AT CIVIC CENTER.

Byline: Jim Skeen Daily News Staff Writer

Three years ago the Antelope Valley's Depression-era civic center had leaking roofs, rain-damaged walls, peeling paint and was slated for the wrecking ball.

Since acquiring the buildings from the city in November 1993, the Antelope Valley Allied Arts Association has cleaned and repaired them to the point they can be used for art shows, though work remains to be done.

``By the 21st century it will all be finished and we'll have stage presentations and art shows - we'll have all the arts,'' said Betty Midkiff, the association's president.

Allied Arts leaders are trying to find more tenants and breathe new life into the complex, which served as a center of government and community activity through the 1950s.

``The roof had a lot of leaks. We had to repair that,'' said Stephen Kucharik, an Allied Arts board member and one of the volunteers working on the building. ``There was an awful lot of trash that had to be picked up.''

The arts group sold off a parcel it owned near Avenue I and Division Street to pay for a sorely needed new heating and cooling system for Memorial Hall, the complex's biggest building. The city paid for the construction of a 79-space parking lot just to the south.

The next major renovation effort will be to rehabilitate the second story of Memorial Hall.

Built in the 1920s and 1930s in a design described as ``restrained art deco,'' the complex at Lancaster Boulevard and Cedar Avenue had housed a sheriff's station and jail, a courthouse and health department offices.

It also was the site of community dances and, after new county offices were built elsewhere in Lancaster, became the playhouse for the Cedar Street Theater community theater group.

``It was a major center for the county of Los Angeles when I was a kid,'' said 65-year-old Lancaster Mayor Frank Roberts.

A water tower on the site was used by the young mayor-to-be as an impromptu billboard for important football games.

``I used to climb the water tower with another boy, the son of a judge, and - I won't say we wrote graffiti on it, but we marked on it things like `Win A.V.,' '' Roberts said, quickly adding it was with water-soluble paint which would wash off with the next rain.

As the Antelope Valley grew, the various county departments moved to bigger accommodations, leaving the buildings to gradually fall into disrepair. The last county offices moved out in the late 1980s.

The city bought the five-building complex in 1987 and had planned on two occasions to raze the structures, but preservationists staved off the bulldozers until Allied Arts bought the buildings for their new headquarters.

Preservationists also succeeded in efforts to get the complex listed with the National Registry of Historic Places.

``It's wonderful we saved this history,'' Midkiff said.

The arts group agreed to pay $249,000 at 4.5 percent interest over 40 years for the complex and to restore it.

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Photo: (color) Women view art on display at the opening ofthe renovated Memorial Hall in Lancaster.

John Lazar/Special to the Daily News