Editorial

We feel pretty safe when we say that most in this community want and

expect the Balboa Performing Arts Theater to come to pass.

It’s been a long-playing dream, in the making for about a decade. And

it is oh so close to becoming reality, if it weren’t for a nasty little

thing called money. Theater planners are about $3 million short of their

financial goals.

An idea now floating around City Hall to use taxpayer dollars to

invest in the theater may infuse new life into the project and ensure

that the city will have a voice in this soon-to-be jewel of the Balboa

Peninsula.

The theater, a onetime movie house that played everything from X-rated

films to the campy midnight movie, “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” has been

touted by city officials as a potential key ingredient to reinvigorate

Downtown Balboa into a vibrant shopping, dining and entertainment

village.

The idea to triple the city’s original investment of $480,000 by

spending another $1.6 million to buy the entire building, which includes

the long-standing Orange Julius business next door, is a tantalizing one

and would, if Mayor Tod Ridgeway has his way, require the theater board

to have one or two voting members from the city.

So far, it doesn’t sound like a bad plan. But Ridgeway and others need

to make the case to residents that the $1.6 million will mean the promise

of front-row seats to the best show in town.

Will the investment pay off in the form of a performing arts theater

that we can all enjoy in the near future? Or will the money be spent and

the residents treated to the pratfalls and Shakespearean drama that has

plagued theater planners for years?

We hope the answer is the former. If it is, then spending the money is

an easy call.

Because as long as it has taken to make the theater a reality, a

promise alone from the city to expedite the process and take an active

role in the future operations of the theater would itself be a boon to

all residents.

Then we could all say, “Let the show begin.”