The hassle to deliver a significant performing arts middle to Clark County is able to workers up with a brand new govt director and knowledgeable fundraiser.
Longtime Government Director Kathy McDonald of the nonprofit Southwest Washington Heart for the Arts mentioned the time has come to go looking nationally for her substitute — and to incorporate an enormous wage bump for an skilled rent who can information the difficult and costly venture from imaginative and prescient to actuality ultimately.
“I’ve gotten us this far, but we need somebody with deep experience who can shepherd this through the whole process, all the way to the day we open our doors,” McDonald mentioned.
Posted earlier this month, the wage vary for the brand new govt director place is $150,000 to as a lot as $200,000 yearly. McDonald mentioned she hopes somebody can be employed by the spring.
McDonald mentioned she’ll even be looking nationally for knowledgeable fundraiser to affix the staff.
The Southwest Washington Heart for the Arts goals to construct a multifaceted performing arts facility, that includes a principal auditorium with 1,200 to 1,400 seats, in addition to smaller, modular areas that can be utilized as group theaters, school rooms, galleries and extra.
“Education and community connection are really key to this,” McDonald mentioned.
After years of urgent for a downtown Vancouver location, supporters of the Southwest Washington Heart for the Arts concept have moved their proposal east. McDonald mentioned the group nonetheless goals to purchase 1 acre within the northwest nook of Columbia Palisades, a mixed-use group now beneath improvement on 192nd Avenue, simply off state Freeway 14, close to Camas metropolis limits.
The location overlooks the Columbia River and can be a horny and centralized draw for folks from throughout Clark County, McDonald mentioned, in addition to from Portland by way of the close by Interstate 205 Bridge.
A parking storage can be a couple of block away, she mentioned. Parking received’t be free, although.
“It will be like going to downtown Portland to go to a concert,” McDonald mentioned.
In line with a monetary assertion filed with the IRS, the wage of the manager director of Beaverton, Ore.’s Patricia Reser Heart for the Arts — which opened in 2022 and is seen as a comparable facility — was $138,498 in 2023. McDonald’s personal pay in 2023 was about half of that, in response to a monetary assertion, so this new rent means a big pay rise for the place.
As envisioned now, the Southwest Washington Heart for the Arts venture is anticipated to value about $60 million. That can come solely from personal and philanthropic sources, not from taxpayers, McDonald mentioned.
“We’ve already raised millions,” she mentioned.
Farther east
In the meantime, an effort to construct an analogous arts facility and theater only a few miles farther east, on Port of Camas-Washougal property on the Washougal waterfront, has dramatically downsized after a advisor’s feasibility examine warned towards something enormous.
“Our initial idea of having our main auditorium seat about 1,200-plus was shooting a little too high,” President Clare Hovland of the Columbia River Arts & Cultural Basis informed The Camas-Washougal Submit Document earlier this yr. “Scaling down … the main auditorium makes sense.”