About

Center Stage Theater was built in 1989-1990 as part of the Paseo Nuevo shopping center according to the Ground Lease and CCRs negotiated by the City of Santa Barbara and the devloper, Reininga Inc., with the help of the City of Santa Barbara Redevelopment Agency and the Santa Barbara County Arts Commission. (The present home of Contemporary Arts Forum, across the terrace from CST, was part of the same process.) Artspace, Inc., which operates the Center Stage Theater, was formed in 1989 by a consortium of non-profit performing arts organizations, specifically to administer the new theater, which had not yet been built, and to advise the developer and architect in building-out the space to meet the actual needs of performing artists and presenters. The following article appeared in the Santa Barbara News-Press in September 1989, just after groundbreaking. The theater had no name yet, nor the first stick of a building, and Artspace was called Arts Services (and there were no Web sites). The article looks at the innovative arts-business-government collaboration that created Center Stage Theater.