Temple Joins Arts Awakening

Orange County performing arts lovers take for granted that they can see name talent and the best local ensembles in classy, modern, immaculate surroundings.

Now comes a chance for that missing something: the special pleasure of sitting in a fine, old hall that has a burnished elegance and offers a sense of history.

A place that affords the smell and shine of well-preserved wooden floors, beams and banisters. A place where the ornamental work in carvings and painted filigree is an elaborate, enduring, don’t-make-’em-like-that-anymore testament to the skills of artisans from generations ago.

The kind of place the new Santa Ana Performing Arts and Event Center aspires to be by choosing the 70-year-old former Masonic Temple at 505 N. Sycamore St. as its home.

Like much else in the awakening downtown that surrounds it, the renovated temple is a work in progress. But its potential appeal is undeniable.

There are few, if any, venues in Orange County that can approach its antique and idiosyncratic splendor: stairways lined with carvings of knights in armor and heraldic shields, an arched theater ceiling decorated with peach and green designs that have a medieval flavor and look like textured tapestries, and a facade that boasts four carved, bright-yellow lion’s heads roaring from just under the roof line.

“It’s one of the most exquisite buildings in the city,” said Jim Gilliam, Santa Ana’s arts coordinator. “It feels like an English hunting lodge. It’s exactly what we need.”

If all goes well for Santa Ana’s hopes of reviving its downtown as a magnet for the arts and night life, history could look back at this month as a pivotal time when the vision took a huge leap toward becoming a reality.

This week brings the opening of the downtown campus of the Orange County High School of the Arts--and with it a daily infusion of more than 900 young dreamers, most from elsewhere in and around Orange County, who aspire to glory--or at least to careers--as actors, dancers, musicians and artists.

Then, on Sept. 22, the Santa Ana Performing Arts and Event Center opens. The evening will showcase two of the building’s multiple spaces, with an art exhibit in the ground-floor lobby and a jazz concert in the main, third-floor concert theater.

The event kicks off a three-day annual municipal celebration, “Sights & Sounds of Santa Ana.” It is meant as a preview, not a grand opening, of the arts center, which is still weeks or perhaps a month away from completion, according to Gil Marrero, the project’s real estate broker and spokesman.

Marrero, a leading player in downtown redevelopment, said a partnership led by Michael F. Harrah, downtown’s key developer, has poured $6 million into renovating the Masonic Temple.

The four-story, Gothic-revival building, topped by a fifth-floor tower, dates from about 1930, Marrero said, and has been vacant for 17 years.

“Thank goodness the building stayed locked and closed off to the public. It was never vandalized,” Marrero said--unlike the Santora building, the badly damaged 1920s-vintage structure that Harrah renovated five years ago as the cornerstone of Santa Ana’s plan to refashion a depressed sector of downtown into an Artists Village.

The new performing arts center has three theaters--the 700-seat main stage on the third floor and 250- and 50-seat halls on the second floor.

The center also will house a restaurant called Aphrodite’s, Marrero said, and the large furnished basement will have a catering kitchen and facilities for meetings and banquets. The thrust has been to finish the renovation, Marrero said--a process that was delayed when Harrah suffered back injuries in a helicopter accident earlier this summer.

When the work is complete, the center’s owners will focus on persuading prospective occupants of the building’s charms, amenities and opportunities. Marrero said Harrah plans to hire a facility-management specialist to book and run the arts center.

Two crucial questions face the project:

* Can it book attractions that will draw crowds big enough to cover expenses and a mortgage? Orange County’s other leading arts venues, such as the Orange County Performing Arts Center and South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa and the Irvine Barclay Theatre at UC Irvine, are nonprofits that can’t make ends meet unless they augment box-office income with donations. The Santa Ana center is a for-profit venture that has to pay its own way.

* Can Santa Ana’s lingering image in some quarters as a problem-plagued urban core be dispelled quickly enough to help the center take off? Santa Ana Police Lt. Dave Petko, district commander for the downtown area, said last week that the Artists Village neighborhood is “almost problem-free compared to what it was years ago,” with police calls no more serious than for public nuisances such as loitering.

Julie Bussell, executive director of the Pacific Chorale, is one of a few arts leaders who have had a preliminary tour of the hall. Bussell says that if the acoustics prove good, it could figure in the chorale’s programming, at least for its youth chorus and chamber group. The full, 160-voice ensemble, which performs at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, is too big to fit on the main stage at the Santa Ana center, she said.

The downtown neighborhood has a special allure for Bussell, whose group is headquartered in a business park in southeast Santa Ana.

“It has a historical look. Santa Ana, by virtue of its architecture, is very appealing.”

A public-relations challenge lies ahead for downtown backers, Bussell said. When she mentions Santa Ana, she said, a lot of people have a “certain impression” formed by the crime and blight that beset downtown during the 1980s and early- to mid-’90s. She says she has taken some doubters on car tours to show that things have changed. “They just can’t believe it. The direction downtown is taking is phenomenal.”

Ami Porat, founding music director of the Mozart Classical Orchestra, is among those who needs to be sold--and hopes he will be. Porat’s 40- to 50-piece chamber orchestra has performed at the Irvine Barclay Theatre and at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach since fleeing its original digs at the Santa Ana High School Auditorium in 1989. Porat says he hasn’t been downtown since.

Frequent complaints about thefts in the parking lot led to the switch, Porat said. “People told me they didn’t want to leave their hubcaps behind.”

But, he said, the county’s performing arts groups have “a tremendous need” for new venues.

Open dates at the 750-seat Irvine Barclay are scarce; Porat wanted to book five concerts there this season and could get only two. Unaware of the Santa Ana Performing Arts Center before a reporter called, Porat said he would make a point of checking out the acoustics, the neighborhood, the parking (there is a municipal garage across the street) and the cost of renting the theaters. If all impressions are favorable, “I would strongly consider doing a series there.”

The Santa Ana center also is on the radar screens of officials from the Pacific Symphony and the Philharmonic Society of Orange County, the county’s leading presenters of classical music.

John E. Forsyte, the Pacific Symphony’s vice president and executive director, says he has not been inside the building but regards it as “potentially a very interesting place” that could serve as a venue for youth concerts and educational performances, and for “edge programming for young-adult audiences,” performances that might include electronic music.

The Philharmonic Society’s director, Dean Corey, toured the construction site several months ago, said Craddock Stropes, the society’s public relations coordinator. With dates at the Irvine Barclay sometimes hard to find, Stropes said, the society is always on the lookout for alternative venues for performances that need a mid-size hall.

“Dean’s philosophy always has been book ‘em (performances) first and find a venue later,” and the new Santa Ana center could be an option, Stropes said.

The old architectural gem has some performance limitations. Even though the nearby High School of the Arts needs a theater for plays and dance programs, and a 700-seat hall would be the right size, the school is passing on the Santa Ana Performing Arts Center.

Ralph Opacic, the school’s executive director, says the stage isn’t technically equipped to meet the school’s lighting and scenic needs for theater and dance; it would be impossible to “fly” scenery onto the stage for set changes.

Opacic said he has talked to Harrah about possible further renovations that would make the stage more suitable, but the arts high school will, for now, take a gypsy approach, using venues around the county for its theater and dance productions, while starting to raise money for a campus expansion that would include a 650-seat theater.

Smaller, less elaborate play productions would work in any of the three halls, Marrero said, but music would be the primary attraction.

The developers “don’t have the exact game plan mapped out, but they know generally where they’re going to go,” Marrero said about the programming.

He predicted that when programming particulars are solidified and audiences start coming downtown, “It’s going to continue to change the perception and identity of Santa Ana. We’re going to be seen as a leader, a beacon for the arts and a melting-pot city that’s coming of age.”

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The California Art Club will exhibit plein-air paintings, and jazz acts Triple Threat and Idris Muhammad will perform Sept. 22 at 6 p.m. at the Santa Ana Performing Arts and Event Center, 505 N. Sycamore St. $15. (714) 571-4272.