Story Photos
 Ellen Peres climbs an aisle in the main hall of LCC's Rose Center for the Arts, which is scheduled to be finished next month. Roger Werth / The Daily News
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Rose Center blossoms
Friday, January 18, 2008 5:33 AM PST
By Tom Paulu
The Daily News
Printable version
E-mail this articleIt will be a few months before the curtain officially rises, but the Rose Center is looking a lot like a place to hear a concert or see a play.
Construction on Lower Columbia College's $24.6 million facility is scheduled to be completed by the end of February, said Ellen Peres, the college's vice president for administrative services.
After that, LCC's drama and music departments can haul in instruments, costumes and props stored at various locations, and the college's art staff can start hanging paintings in the building's new gallery.
The college plans to hold spring quarter classes in the facility. A grand opening is envisioned for May, though just what it includes hasn't been decided, Peres said.
Construction on the 54,500-square-foot building at the corner of 15th and Maple started in August 2006, after the college demolished its Fine Arts building, an old Masonic Temple and a McDonald's restaurant.
The arts center was originally supposed to be finished last October, but bad weather and a drywaller's strike delayed completion, Peres said. "It's a really complex building. You don't expect all the little things that come out."
This week, she donned her pink hard hat and gave a walk-through tour of the facility. It's enough to make musicians, thespians and visual artists salivate.
The entrance to the building is on the west side, toward the campus interior.
Wall surfaces are covered in fir and cherry paneling, thanks to a $1 million donation from June Rose in honor of her late husband, Stanley Rose. Without that gift, walls would have been institutional brick or wall board, Peres said.
One of the first thing visitors will see is a 10-by-40-foot painting by renowned Portland artist Lucinda Parker. The acrylic, a loose representation of logs and water rushing into the Columbia River, is scheduled to be installed next month.
In the main auditorium, workers recently bolted down the 525 cherry wood seats with green upholstery. The hall will be used primarily for musical performances. Most of the seats slope up from the stage though a few will be on upper-level side balconies. The seats have places for name tags - donate $1,000 and your name will be inscribed on one.
Yet to come is a Masonite floor on the stage.
A partition was erected 4 feet in front of the stage's back wall so actors and technicians can cross behind it during performances. The cross-cover space was added when a basement was cut from the design to save money. Even with the crossover space, the stage looks much bigger than those in the Columbia Theatre and R.A. Long High School.
"It's not just a theater," Peres said. "It's a lecture hall" for use with larger classes.
The 125 seats in the smaller auditorium are purple. The thrust stage in the smaller hall is surrounded by seats on three sides. Unlike the Pepper Studio Theatre a few blocks away, the LCC space has a big backstage space.
The two LCC theaters will share spacious scene and costume shops, a dressing room and a "green room" where performers wait offstage. The scene shop has a two-story wall for painting backdrops.
The new building's art gallery, which has a main floor and mezzanine, appears to have three or four times as much display space as the current one in the Main Building. The college will hire someone to keep it open more hours than the current gallery, Peres said. Also to be hired is a full-time technical specialist with expertise on the theater's lighting and sound systems.
The Rose Center also includes a recording studio for the college's audio technology program, which started last fall. The studio has foot-thick walls so punk rock riffs don't bother classical musicians in practice rooms down the hall.
Peres' favorite spot isn't one of the auditoriums, however. "This is the most beautiful room, I think," she said entering a maple-paneled rehearsal space that's as big as the smaller of the two theaters. The rehearsal space will have moveable curtains that can be adjusted to acoustically suit vocal or instrumental music. "The acoustics in here end up being close to wonderful," she said.
With portable risers, the rehearsal room can be used for performances, too.
Here and there around the building, "we have a lot of benches and seats for students to sit and study" - though of course not sleep.
Outside, a native plant garden will sprout on the side next to Maple Street, across from the college's administrative offices. A "heritage grove" of native trees will be planted between the new building and Student Center.
The Rose Center's upstairs lobby has a balcony that Peres suggested as a fine location for a reception. "It's got a great view of the campus." The view will become even more scenic in about six years, when the college's squat Instructional Services Office is demolished. That will open up an unobstructed view of the college's central plaza and other newer buildings.
For now, the best views from the Rose Center are from an upstairs room on the southeast corner. What's supposed to be a general purpose classroom has floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides.
It might be hard for LCC students used to a burgers-and-pizza diet to concentrate on their instructors in the glass-walled space, however. The view includes no less than five fast-food eateries in close proximity.
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