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Eisemann Center breathes new life into Richardson

By Kim Malcolm, KERA 90.1 reporter

Dallas, TX – Workers in hard hats rush to put the finishing touches on the Charles W. Eisemann Center, on North Central Expressway just north of Campbell Road. Dust fills the air and plastic sheets cover the seats in the cherrywood-lined Hill Performance Hall.

Through the confusion, long-time arts volunteer and former Richardson city council member Gerry Leftwich beams like a proud mother, and points out every detail with delight.

Gerry Leftwich, arts volunteer and former Richardson city council member: See? See, all the hydraulics for the orchestra pit? As I said this is not a glamorous part, but it makes for glamour when it comes out at the top.

And glamour is what the Eisemann Center is bringing to the City of Richardson. Perhaps best known for its Telecom Corridor, the city of 93-thousand is now making a serious bid to also be known as a showplace for the arts.

At the heart of the $42 million Center is the 15-hundred seat performance hall, the new permanent home for the Richardson Symphony Orchestra. The stage area is second only to Bass Hall in Fort Worth in size. There's a more intimate theatre as well, for dance, music, and cabaret style programs.

Leftwich: This is the small 350-seat theatre with the flexible stage, and you know how artists are. Their imagination goes to infinity, and it's so wonderful to see what they can create with such space.

But just as significant, the Center is home to a 3100-square foot banquet hall, to be used for corporate meetings. Bruce McPherson is the managing director of the Eisemann Center. He says the space has everything a corporate executive could want for their turn on the business stage.

Bruce McPherson, Managing Director, Eisenmann Center: The entire building is being outfitted with a broadcast infrastructure which makes it suitable for corporations and businesses to come in and use the spaces for a business meeting environment, where they can use satellite or send the signal to other centers around the country, so it ties us into that world as well.

That tie-in to the corporate world is what made the center possible. Arts groups in Richardson had been agitating for a permanent home since the 1960s, but the city had other priorities. Talks with Plano city officials to share a joint performing arts center also foundered in the early 90s, when Plano opted to build its own.

But the arts groups didn't give up. Bill Keffler is the City Manager of Richardson. He remembers the day he sat down with the mayor and two DART officials for lunch, and the plan all came together on a napkin.

Bill Keffler, City Manager of Richardson: I'm not sure whose napkin it was, but it was a clean one, and it was more than likely sitting on the table and everyone had out their pens. And from that napkin, which to this day captured the urban center, much as it is now, began as series of meetings that ultimately ended in a public announcement in March 1997 that we were going to build the Galatyn Park Urban Center.

Their plan was to bring together local corporations and the city to build an 18-acre urban center in the middle of the Telecom Corridor. The Renaissance Hotel opened last year, and Nortel Networks threw in 1600 parking spaces. The city put in the infrastructure and the Galatyn overpass on 75, and finally the Galatyn Park DART station opened in July. Sitting at the center of it all is the performing arts center. Adjacent land has been zoned for restaurants and apartments, and when the entire project is completed, planners expect it to draw visitors from Plano, Allen, McKinney and Frisco.

The end result is a state-of-the-art multipurpose facility that Keffler doesn't think compares to any other facility in North Texas. He also knows how lucky they were with the timing.

Keffler: And in this day and time, given the economy, if any of our time frame had slipped in getting these components, this merger of dreams put together, we could well have missed the opportunity.

The Eisemann Center already has 400 events booked, and McPherson expects as many as 200-thousand people to pass through the doors in its first year. Gerry Leftwich, who has a lobby named after her and her husband, will be one of those visitors, to a center she first dreamed of in 1969.

Leftwich: It's very open and contemporary, which is where we are in 2002, and this is what we hoped for, and I think we've realized our dream.

The Eisemann Center opens with a concert featuring Broadway stars Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin Saturday night. The Center hosts a public open house next Sunday, September 22nd. For KERA 90.1, I'm Kim Malcolm.

To contact Kim Malcolm, please send emails to kmalcolm@kera.org.