Only a solitary sign marks the site that Petaluma dreamed would become home to the Polly Hannah Klaas Performing Arts Center at 407 Western Ave. It's a dream that has stalled out since the board of directors overseeing the effort disbanded.
Petaluma Assistant Recreation Supervisor Don Phoenix confirmed that there is nothing on the horizon for the city-owned property. The city is still holding in trust $169,298 that the former board of directors for the proposed arts center raised a decade ago, but that money is not enough to renovate the former Petaluma Christian Church. Phoenix said the city would hold the money for the proposed Polly Hannah Klaas Performing Arts Center indefinitely.
Last year Petaluma voters shot down the latest attempt to transform it into a performing arts center when they failed to pass Measure X, a parcel tax that would have funded renovation of the building, along with improvements to seven other recreation facilities.
According to city officials, who condemned the red-shingled building as unsafe in 2000, the renovation would require foundation work, electrical rewiring for modern technology and earthquake retrofitting - for starters. That would cost an estimated $1.2 to $1.7 million.
Built in 1910 to house the Petaluma Christian Church, the building was designed by noted Berkeley architect Francis W. Reid. Sixty years later the city purchased the building when the church decided to move to a larger facility. The original plans called for leveling the building and turning the space into a parking lot for City Hall, which is just across the street. But local preservation groups succeeded in having it designated as an historic site.
After 12-year-old Polly Klaas was abducted from her Petaluma home and later found murdered in 1993, the city looked for a way to honor the young girl. An avid performer, it seemed natural to create a space where children could sing and dance in her memory. After the city dedicated the building in 1994, Cinnabar Theater agreed to manage the center after it was renovated. But the remodel never occurred.
In 2000, the first graduating class of Leadership Petaluma decided to take on renovation of the building as its civic project. They created a board of directors and started fundraising, but the plans fell apart when its executive director Jack Stein was convicted of embezzling $25,000 of the funds raised.
The group had hired Stein in 2003 to produce "West Side Story" as a fundraiser for the performing arts center. But, instead of using the money raised to mount the play, he wrote checks to himself and deposited them into a shadow account. Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Raima Ballinger ordered Stein to repay the funds in addition to serving eight months in jail.
For now the building sits abandoned, waiting for the dream of a performance center to somehow become a reality.
(Contact Lois Pearlman at argus@arguscourier.com.)
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