Editorial: Arts center at Fremont School deserves rave reviews
Published: Monday, Nov. 25, 2013 - 12:00 am
Amid all the consternation that the Community Center Theater renovation is stuck in neutral, another important arts project for Sacramento is speeding ahead.
If all goes as planned, the $6.5 million E. Claire Raley Studios for the Performing Arts will open next fall at the old Fremont School in midtown, providing rehearsal, classroom and office space for the California Musical Theatre, the Sacramento Ballet and the merged Sacramento Opera and Philharmonic.
Some final pieces are falling into place. Last Thursday night, the Sacramento City Unified School District board unanimously approved a $1-a-year lease for Fremont, which closed as an adult education school last year. On Dec. 10, the Sacramento City Council is to sign off on the lease.
In May, the council approved $5 million in grants to help redo the 93-year-old building, half the money coming from repayments of a city loan to the Crocker Art Museum.
Private donors have chipped in another $1.5 million so far; the center is named for philanthropist Joyce Raley Teel’s late mother. More fundraising is planned for possible future enhancements.
This project is a good deal for all involved, and could be a template for future cultural projects.
It will bring arts groups under one roof to encourage more collaboration. In these economic times, the arts groups made the right move to join forces behind this project and abandon a plan to build