Pittsburg State President Steve Scott listed his priorities for the upcoming year at a faculty meeting in mid-August.
It was not noteworthy that a new performing arts center was on his priority list. In fact, there have only been nine presidents of Pittsburg State in its history. The plans to build a performing arts center go back to the fourth president, George Budd, as early as 1972.
But it was noteworthy that it was first on the list.
“We haven’t had a performing arts center since 1980 when Carnie Hall was torn down,” Scott said. “The conversation has gone on for more than 30 years. What people recognize that is different now is that we have a large initial gift.”
That gift comes in the form of a $10 million pledge from an anonymous source, and $6 million of that money is already in hand. Scott said that money is already being used to hire architects to begin planning for the facility and determining what will be needed.
PSU officials have already been getting ideas. Just last week several took a trip to see a $50 million performing arts center in the St. Louis area.
“We’re thinking about something in the $25 million range,” Scott said. “We have a lot of work to do. We have bigger dreams and aspirations than we can afford. We have to better define the acts that we want to take place in the building. That’ll take place first.”
Just one county to the north is a relatively new performing arts center, the newly opened Danny and Willa Ellis Fine Arts Center at Fort Scott Community College. Part of that facility is filled with classrooms, and the entire building is used for academic purposes.
Scott said PSU’s current facilities do not do enough when hosting visiting speakers, performances and others. But there’s plenty to consider when putting together plans for a PAC.
“First, we have to serve the academic programs of the institution,” Scott said. “We have some outstanding performing arts programs. In some ways, they are outstanding in spite of the facilities. We’ve not had a lecture series on the national speaker level. We need to have leaders on this campus that will expose students to provocative, new ideas.”
This will not be like other construction projects, though. Scott said that on other projects, planners consider what they want in the project first. Scott said the PAC would have a hard total budget set, and then attempt to do the best they can with that budget.
The exact budget and amound of funds needed have yet to be determined, he said.
“We’ll end up with a rendering after this planning process,” he said. “It will be much more exciting to see what it will be rather than what it might be. We’ll be aggressive in fundraising, and we’ll push that harder as the design process concludes.”
Andrew Nash can be reached at andrew.nash@morningsun.net or by calling 231-2600 ext. 132.
