Seattle Central College is planning to transform Broadway Performance Hall into the "Broadway Achievement Center." Plans include removing the curtain and turning the 295-seat theater into an auditorium, essentially making the room less of a theater space and more of a place for talks and panels.
SCC will also add a library annex to the hall, which includes meeting rooms and a tutorial center. SCC communications director Barbra Childs says the college is adding the library space for reasons related to accreditation. "According to the State Board of Community and Technical Colleges, we have deficiency of library space," she said, "so we're adding some library classroom and study space."
The proposal is part of the Washington community college system's capital budget request to the state legislature, which was recently approved. Funding SCC's redesign is listed as the 43rd priority. Given the project's low ranking, Childs estimates the change won't happen for "another 10 years."
Film festivals, dance troupes, and theater companies, have rented out the theater space in SCC's gorgeous stone building for almost 50 years now. According to the college's brief history of the place, several famous people have performed in the hall, "including singer/conductor Bobby McFerrin, singer Linda Ronstadt, directors Sydney Pollack and Quentin Tarantino, actors Alan Alda and Richard Harris, tap-dance legends Cholly Atkins and Arthur Duncan, beat poet Allen Ginsberg, psychologist Oliver Sacks, choreographer Bill Evans, graphic artist Art Chantry and activist Bobby Seale, to name just a few." Richard Jessup's Men in Dance Festival kicks off in the space this weekend.
The hall was built in 1911 and originally served as part of Seattle's first high school, Broadway High. When the last class graduated in 1946, Edison Technical School took it over for a while until, in 1966, Seattle Community College absorbed the tech school. The innards were refurbished in 1979, but the building is on the National Register of Historic Places.
According to Seattle's SpaceLab NW, there are 161 spaces dedicated to performance in King County. This move would take us down to 160. The college will still have its Erickson Theater, though, so shows that need a curtain could go there.
However, the oncoming loss of another theater space on Capitol Hill stings a bit. In the last few years, Little Theater on 19th Ave and the Eclectic Theater have closed. Hugo House also turned its theater into more of an auditorium space that will no longer support weeks-long runs of shows.
