At 20, Peace Center gets attention

By Cindy Landrum  

JANUARY 26, 2010 11:38 a.m. (0)

Megan Riegel envisions the Peace Center for the Performing Arts as a community gathering spot even on non-show nights.

A planned $21.5 million expansion will help do that, she said.

The driveway in front of the facility’s concert hall will be gone and a public plaza will take its place.

A glass façade will give the lobby a much-needed expansion and provide an inviting look inside.

And around back, on the Reedy River side of the facility, preliminary plans call for a new space to provide a place for private parties. The landscaping will be changed to make the area feel like a continuation of the popular Falls Park, said Riegel, Peace Center president.

It will be the first major expansion to the Peace Center since it opened in 1990.

“We looked at every square inch of the Peace Center with the question, ‘How can we make this better?’” Riegel said.

A private fund-raising campaign will begin shortly. Greenville business leaders Rick Pennell and Rick Timmons will serve as co-chairmen.

A public capital campaign will be held some time next year, Riegel said. She hopes construction will start in the first quarter of 2011.

On Monday, the Greenville City Council passed a resolution to give the Peace Center a tax increment financing grant of up to $2.5 million over two years if the Peace Center raises the rest of the money.

Riegel said she is confident the community will support the fund-raising campaign.

“I think we’ve made a good cause for support because of our track record,” she said. “The Peace Center is so meaningful to the people here.”

The lobby of the Peace Center’s concert hall is an obvious place for improvement, Riegel said.

During sold-out events, the lobby is clogged with shoulder-to-shoulder patrons trying to get to their seats, the restrooms, the bar and the merchandise tables.

“Even with half a house, the lobby is too small,” she said. “The plan will eliminate every choke point and we have a lot of them because of all the angles.”

The facility’s theaters will be “tweaked” under the plan, she said.

“A few years ago, we had a major expansion of the sound system,” she said. “The theaters are in good shape.”

The backstage areas and the green room need updating, she said.

Construction is expected to take 18 months.

Shows will be held during the project, she said.

The Peace Center for the Performing Arts is credited with helping to revive downtown Greenville.

In the early 1980s, Main Street was a collection of empty store fronts, vacant lots and periodic businesses trying to hang on.

A citizens’ committee was formed in 1985 to investigate the possibility of building a performing arts center.

A year later, the Peace family kicked off a capital campaign with a $10 million pledge in memory of Roger C. Peace, B.H. Peace, Jr., and Frances Peace Graham.

Before construction of the $42 million facility, the six-acre site at the corner of Main and Broad streets housed three deteriorating buildings – the Coach Factory where wagons had been produced for the Confederate army, the Huguenot Mill textile plant built in the 1880s and a former mayonnaise factory now known as the Wyche Pavilion.

All three buildings were incorporated into the complex.

It opened in November 1990.

The Peace Center has a 2,100-seat concert hall and the 400-seat Gunter Theatre, named after arts advocate Dorothy Hipp Gunter, who gave $3 million for the theater and bought one of the center’s Steinway pianos.

Four community arts organizations – Carolina Ballet, the Greenville Symphony, the International Ballet and the South Carolina Children’s Theatre – are resident companies of the Peace Center.

In addition, the center has a Broadway musical series and attracts national musical, theater and dance acts.

“We’re trying to respond to the great change in downtown Greenville. It’s gone from a place where you just walk by to a place to hang out,” Riegel said. “We want the Peace Center campus to be a place the entire community can enjoy, whether or not they are here for a show.”

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