Art anyone?
The Tempe Center for the Arts, located at 700 W. Rio Salado Parkway, will open its doors on Sunday, Sept. 9, with a Grand Opening Family Day Event from noon to 5 p.m.
The free exhibition will feature performances, excerpts from books and musicals presented by groups such as Childsplay and Tempe Little Theater, as well as poetry readings and percussion music.
Participants will also have a chance to take a tour of the 88,000-square-foot building, which includes a 600-seat theater, a studio gallery that promises to captivate visitors with both two- and three-dimensional artwork and a 17-acre art park with a lakeside amphitheater as well as many other amenities.
Many ASU students and community members are looking forward to the TCA's opening day and plan to take advantage of its proximity to ASU.
"We are a community that recognizes the importance of the amenities," said Tempe City Councilwoman Barb Carter. "We are very much a college town as ASU has such a presence in the community, but the cultural piece was missing for our citizens, and I think that's why people are looking forward to it."
But others, like journalism junior Carly Campo, are unsure of whether the art center will have art that is geared toward their interests.
"I think that ASU really differs in its students and that there is a large pool of people, so I'm sure that they will find a niche [of people] that are interested," Campo said.
Regardless of one's taste, the Tempe Arts Center promises to always be full of a variety of art.
The building itself is constructed to look like a piece of art. Students may also be able to expect to see student art featured in the center.
Whatever its use and featured art, the TCA is a long time coming.
In May 2000, Tempe voters passed Proposition 400, which cleared the way for the creation of a new art center in the heart of Tempe.
Proposition 400 allotted a 1/10 percent sales tax that would be used to provide the funding for development, construction and operation of the art center. Of the funds generated by the tax, $63 million was spent on the construction of the building and adjacent park.
Though Proposition 400 led the way to the funding for the actual building, the idea was put onto paper long before by the Tempe Municipal Arts Commission in 1996.
Inspired by several surveys that showed that the citizens of Tempe wished for their own art center, Carter put the idea before the council.
Then came the construction.
"We chose to build next to the lake, because the art center wouldn't have really fit anywhere else," Carter said. "The lake kind of spoke for it, and it spoke for the lake."
A work eight and a half years in the making, the entire operation consisted of five years of planning, one year to clear out the landfill near Tempe Town Lake onto which the art center was to built and two and a half years of actual construction.
Reach the reporter at allison.gatlin@asu.edu.
