It's been a long and expensive road that has taken the Tempe Center for the Arts from a voter proposition and a dream to the sprawling, crazy-roofed facility on Rio Salado Parkway set to open this weekend. Once open, the Center will house primarily local performances and showcase art in its two theaters, gallery and lakeside meeting space.
So is the ASU population thrilled about the grand opening of this state-of-the-art cultural center in its backyard?
"Not so much," says undeclared freshman Matt Gorgol. "I really don't know about it."
Gorgol is not alone in his ignorance about the new Center, with other students confessing no knowledge of TCA, or musing "Is that the one building on Rio Salado?"
Though they helped finance the building's construction (funding for the facility came from a 1/10-cent sales tax approved in 2000), many in the ASU community don't even know the Center is opening.
Kali Rapp is one ASU student that does.
Rapp, a museum studies senior, has been working and interning with TCA since June — answering questions from the public, helping with purchases, and organizing deliveries, among other tasks.
"We really built the thing from the ground up," she says.
Rapp says students in her art and museum studies classes have expressed a lot of interest in the project. But she recognizes that this group is different than most students.
"[TCA's audience is] an older crowd at the moment," she says. "It's not so much the student population, but hopefully it will be."
She says TCA offers opportunities ASU groups like the Programming and Activities Board could utilize.
Jody Ulich, cultural services director for the city of Tempe, says she believes most of the Center's audience will not come from ASU.
"[Between ASU students and other community members], I think it will primarily be other members of community," she says. However, Ulich says that she does think the Center will see students audition for performances, play in the symphonies that perform there, work in the box office, volunteer, or visit the facility.
The city has not advertised the facility on the ASU campus, she says, but says it's a "possibility" that it will.
While ASU students may not make up the bulk of the Center's attendees, a large amount of ASU involvement went into its creation. Terri Cranmer from ASU's public events office worked with the city on designing the building. Sally Garrison, formerly at Gammage Auditorium, oversees the box office. Three of the design principals at Tempe-based Architekton, which co-designed the Center, are ASU alumni. Many of the artists in the opening show are also current ASU professors, Ulich says.
"We had a lot of community members involved in this, and we wanted to be sure ASU is involved from the ground up," she says.
Alex Ferrari, who interned with the Center during her final semester at ASU last spring and now works for the city full-time, is also bringing Sun Devil roots to the project. Ferrari, a 2007 art history and museum studies graduate, works in the city's cultural services department and has been organizing, cleaning and hanging works of art in preparation for the museum's opening.
She says that she used to be like many ASU students in not knowing about Tempe's artistic endeavors.
"Personally, I didn't know that Tempe had its own cultural services department," she says. "I didn't know all these things were going on."
Though she says she's unsure how to attract ASU students to the new facility, she still thinks it's a boon for the community.
"There used to be this little theatre," says Ferrari of the city's previous art facility. "Now it's this big, great thing. Since it's in between Tempe Beach Park and Diablo Stadium, [I hope] people will be like, 'I didn't know that was there. Let's check it out next time we're around.' "
And just maybe those people will be ASU students.
