ARTS SET FOR HOME AT CSUN COUNTY TO ANNOUNCE HALL, MUSIC CENTER PARTNERSHIP.

Byline: NAUSH BOGHOSSIAN

Staff Writer

Giving a boost to performing arts in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles County officials are expected to announce today a $2 million investment in a local university performing arts center and an unprecedented partnership with the Music Center.

The $100 million performing arts center at California State University, Northridge, would be the largest in the Valley and include a centerpiece 1,700-seat auditorium to accommodate music, dance, theater and film performances.

For the first time, it would bring to the Valley a venue large enough for full-scale Broadway productions and operas.

"There's a total absence in the San Fernando Valley we're going to address with this hall," CSUN President Jolene Koester said.

"The best indicator of that is if the Valley were its own city, it would be the fifth or sixth largest in the U.S. -- and the only one of such population density that does not currently have a major performing arts center like the one we're building now."

Home to nearly 2 million of the county's 10 million residents, the San Fernando Valley has long needed such a venue and county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said expanding cultural arts in the region would be a cultural and economic boon.

"The arts are an economic engine. They employ a lot of people," said the supervisor, who represents the Valley on the county board and has pushed the project for years. "And it has the possibility of finally being a critical mass of bringing another kind of programming to the San Fernando Valley that UCLA has had, and USC to some extent."

The county-owned Music Center -- one of the three largest performing arts centers in the nation -- is set to sign a unique agreement today with the university to begin exploring joint programming.

CSUN and county officials hope the resident companies at the Music Center would use the CSUN facility to showcase their performances.

Yaroslavsky said they've had serious conversations with the L.A. Opera and the Center Theater group.

"That relationship doesn't exist with any other university and the county and it's going to bring the kind of programming that otherwise wouldn't have been seen in the San Fernando Valley," he said.

Catherine Babcock, spokeswoman for the Music Center, said officials are excited about the new relationship with the university.

"The partnership is a really exciting one as we're being looked to in this collaboration as an adviser and consultant," Babcock said. "I don't think we know what the possibilities are."

The project is nearly 75 percent funded with $56 million from a state bond measure passed in 1996, about $15 million in private funding, and the $2 million from the county. Koester hopes full funding would be reached in three years.

Construction is scheduled to begin this year, with completion in late 2009.

David Fleming, chairman of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, said the new center would serve as a cultural and economic landmark for the Valley.

"This new center, which will be one of the finest in the world, will provide ... the world's finest artistic symphonic and dramatic entertainment," Fleming said.

"There will be two facilities in L.A. County -- Disney Hall and this performing arts center -- that will be the cream of the crop."

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Photo:

An artist's drawing shows the planned $100 million performing arts center at California State University, Northridge.

Map:

Proposed Performing Arts Center

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