Arts Center Has Colorful History

By Sarah Paul

Legend has it Zala still sings her Hungarian melody at the everyday, although few can hear her. She was murdered in 1919.

With pinned up curls and a flowing white dress, Zala could easily be a character in one of the Arts Center’s plays. But according to Steve Carlson, former general manager of the High Street Arts Center and current marketing director of the Moorpark Chamber of Commerce, Zala is real.

“When we were doing the tear down on the renovation we had a guy from Tennessee. He was a roughneck; His job was to help in demolition. He’d come up to me and say, ‘Steven, can you get that girl to stop singing? That one up there. She’s just singing and I can’t understand a word she’s saying’,” Carlson said. “We never told him about the ghost. We never once said a word to him.”

Zala is just one of many stories that provide the heartbeat to the High Street Arts Center. Built in the 1920s, the High Street Arts Center carries more than eight decades of memories. Once the epicenter of Ventura County entertainment, the Arts Center has a compelling past and a hopeful future.

A large part of the theater’s past was Lorine Willard and her twin daughters. Willard, who has since died, owned the theater from 1934 to 1961 and, in fact, lived in it.

After leaving her husband, a traveling salesman, Willard’s house burnt down. When Willard lost her house, the townspeople of Moorpark assembled their own version of a barn raising.

They built her a house attached to the back of her theater. The house is now the theater’s dressing room.

Although the rich history of the theater added to its charisma, it took a toll on its appearance. No one knows this better than Larry Janss, a previous owner who was responsible for its most recent renovations.

“When I started peeling the onion, I realized the onion was sour,” he said. “The building was standing up because all the termites were very fond of each other and they were all holding hands.”

There was not only extensive termite damage, but also the pipes that were installed pre-depression era had completely dissolved. Also, the front wall of the theater was not built on a foundation, but a two by four, which had also dissolved.

“The roof was holding up the wall rather than the wall holding up the roof,” said Janss.

Janss paid $275,000 for the theater. Including his payment for the renovations and a city loan, the theater cost Janss $1.4 million.

After owning the High Street Arts Center for  about four years, Janss sold it to the city of Moorpark for $1.2 million.

“I took about a $200,000 cut; I like to think of it as a contribution to the arts,” said Janss.

The theater sat silent through vacancy, renovation and low activity until it was reborn in 2005.  When the city of Moorpark took over the High Street Arts Center, it was given new life.

The High Street Arts Center’s reputation had been reestablished as one of theater. According to Hugh Riley, Assistant City Manager, keeping the theater active is not an easy job.

“The theater business is risky business,” he said.

Fortunately, the city hired a general manager who knows how to take risks, Ken Rayzor. After being in radio advertisement and commercial production for 30 years, Rayzor knows how to get the consumers’ attention.

“Advertising on the radio or on television is like the opening act of some concert, nobody came to see them,” he said.

Rayzor only had about five to ten seconds to catch the listeners’ attention. This experience has helped him quickly catch the attention of the citizens of Moorpark.

With the help of Rayzor, the High Street Art Center’s recent production of Les Miserable grossed more than $40,000 in five weeks.

According to Rayzor, it’s the people involved with the theater that make it special.

“The building’s just a building as beautiful and as much history as it has,” said Rayzor. “It’s the people that come through it and it is their talents, their dedication, their passion that make it special.”

Carlson believes the High Street Arts Center was important in the past, is in the present and will be in the future.

“It’s still the gem and anchor of High Street and it has been since the day it was built in the 1920s,” he said.

Those involved with this gem of High Street can’t promise a Zala sighting any time soon, but strange things will be happening beginning Friday evening, when the evil Mr. Hyde of Robert Louis Stevenson’s imagination makes an appearance as part of the Art Center’s production of the musical Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. For information about the production, visit the Center’s website.