TVHS to Get New Theater

is slated to get a new performing arts center.

The school district’s board of trustees voted 5-0 today to build a $14 million facility on the school’s campus.

Construction should start during the summer and last 18 months.

“The kids have been hungry for this,” said Derek Heid, the director of the drama programs at TVHS and Great Oak High. “I think it’s wonderful.”
A round of cheers and applause greeted the vote from supporters in the board room on Rancho Vista Way.

“We can be the best actors we can possibly be with this theater,” Erich Parden, 17, a TVHS junior, told the board members.

The facility will be a resource for the community, said Donna Morris, a library technician at Great Oak High. “A new performing arts center at Temecula Valley High would benefit so many students as well as our whole community,” she said.

Despite the warm response, some people questioned the idea of spending millions on a theater while the district forces teachers to take furlough days and cuts programs.

“How can we afford a new theater… in this cash-strapped economy?” Earlene Bodman asked the board members.

The district will pay for the project by selling bonds, though thanks to a federal assistance program, it won’t pay all of the interest on those bonds, said Lori Ordway-Peck, the assistant superintendent of business services.

The district was approved for a “qualified school construction bond,” which will pay for part of the interest on the bonds it will sell to pay for the project, Ordway-Peck said.

This effectively cuts the cost in half, she said.

“We’re basically going to build this project for half the cost we’d otherwise have to pay,” she said. “It’s a very, very good deal.”

The school applied for this type of federal assistance in 2009 with no success, and since was able to make no progress on it. “The project just sat since then,” Ordway-Peck said.

The school chose to build the performing arts center rather than other projects on the district’s to-do list because of one stipulation of the federal program.

“The project had to be ready to go, and this is the one we had ready to go,” Ordway-Peck said.

As part of the project, the old gymnasium will be converted into classrooms and restrooms. Performing arts will be reintroduced as an integral – rather than periphery – part of the school’s curriculum. Also, a theater manager will be hired to maintain the facility and coordinate its district-wide use.

The construction management fee, general conditions, district contingencies and the construction contingencies will cost $13.4. Inspection services will cost $401,780, and architectural services for construction administration is $185,625.