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Study sought on feasibility of Geneva cultural center

The Geneva Cultural Arts Commission is seeking to hire a consultant to help it study the feasibility of having a cultural arts center in Geneva.

It published requests for proposals in late July, and they are due Aug. 10.

The commission is an advisory body which the city council has directed to obtain a study. Depending on the cost, a contract may require approval of the city council.

The commission wants the study to begin with an inventory of venues and programs already available, then move on to a needs assessment and survey of the community's thoughts. The study would then move on to economic impact analysis, design concepts and a business plan for operating a center.

The commission will do the inventory itself, to save money, and believes it does not have enough money now to do the rest of the study all at once. So, it proposes paying a consultant only for the needs assessment and community survey.

There is $5,000 set aside in the city budget for a study this fiscal year.

Geneva does not have any movie or big stage theaters, other than the auditorium at Geneva High School. A theater troupe performs in the basement of a business building on West State Street. There are at least seven commercial galleries in downtown Geneva, according to artgalleriesgeneva.com. The Geneva Film Festival screens entries in various locations, including the meeting room of the public library and in the city council chamber at City Hall.

The cultural arts commission had been working with Geneva school authorities on a plan for a new high school auditorium, as part of plans to expand and remodel Geneva High School. The envisioned new auditorium would have had the stage space to host professional productions such as plays and concerts; the backstage area of the current theater limits the size and type of sets that can be used. It presently seats about 550; the new auditorium would have held more than 800 people. Critics, including at least one then-school board member, pointed out that the theater at Pheasant Run Resort in St. Charles, the Norris Cultural Arts Center in St. Charles and Fermilab's Ramsey Auditorium are all a short drive away from Geneva, and questioned whether a new auditorium was necessary.

The expansion plan was put on hold by the school board due to costs, when the economy started tanking in 2008.

City officials, CAC members and members of the Strategic Plan Advisory Commission have been talking about having a cultural arts center since the first city strategic plan was adopted in 1998. They have talked about having the city buy the Geneva Public Library next to it once the library moves to a new site, then moving city hall into the library building and putting a cultural center in the city hall. In the meantime, however, the city renovated city hall to get more office space, and moved some offices to the former fire station across First Street.

Last week, the library board voted to buy the site of a shuttered factory, near Richards and State streets, as a site for a new library.

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