Web Posted: 05/17/2006 02:15 AM CDT

Mike Greenberg
Express-News Staff Writer

A consultant hired by the city to study local needs for cultural facilities has sketched a recommendation for a new multi-hall performing arts center — price tag unknown — and about $20 million in upgrades to existing venues.

Louise Stevens of ArtsMarket, based in Bozeman, Mont., reported her findings Tuesday to the Cultural Collaborative's implementation committee.

Her report was in part an update to a 1996 study she conducted into the adequacy of existing facilities.

Some of her 1996 recommendations have been implemented, but the biggest item, conversion of the Alameda Theater into a state-of-the-art live venue with the addition of a much-deeper stage house, awaits about $16 million to $18 million in funding.

Stevens' first recommendation was to complete the Alameda renovation and other projects from the 1996 list — including improvements to Sunken Garden Theater and the Majestic Theater's long-unused upper balcony and exterior maintenance on other city-owned venues.

At the same time, she said, the city should begin a process leading to the building of "a multi-hall campus for the performing arts."

"It is past time, it is essential" to plan for major new performing arts facilities, she told the committee.

Based on information provided by local arts organizations, Stevens found needs for six types of new facilities:

An 1,850-seat concert hall for the San Antonio Symphony and other acoustic music.

A 1,600-seat theater for opera and dance, unless the renovated Alameda meets those needs.

A recital hall, with 650-800 seats, for chamber music and the Youth Orchestras of San Antonio, which Stevens described as one of the most active organizations of its type in the country.

A flexible "black-box" theater that could seat between 75 and 250.

Rehearsal space for music, dance and theater.

An education facility for after-school programs and outreach. "Virtually every arts complex now includes an arts education wing," Stevens said.

Stevens also identified four potential sites for a performing arts campus — expansion and reconfiguration of the Municipal Auditorium, adaptive reuse and additions to the U.S. courthouse facility in HemisFair Park, new construction on the west bank of the San Antonio River south of the San Antonio Museum of Art, and new construction on the former Pearl Brewery site

Costs for performing arts centers recently completed or under construction range widely.

At the low end, Stevens cited $30 million to add a 1,700-seat concert hall and 600-seat opera theater to an existing 2,400-seat auditorium in Raleigh, N.C.

The costliest was $450 million for Miami's all-new facility with a 2,400-seat opera house, a 2,200-seat concert hall, a 200-seat studio theater, a public plaza and an education center.

Funding sources ranged from mostly tax-supported to all-private.

Implementation committee chairman Tom Frost III said the next step would be for Stevens to do a more detailed feasibility study that would consider funding sources, economic development potential, construction and site costs and other variables.