City discusses who will take over the Oxnard Performing Arts Center
OXNARD Calif. - The City of Oxnard is looking for a new company to run the Oxnard Performing Arts and Convention Center.
The PACC almost closed back in July because of a $9.2 million deficit. There are now three different companies looking to take over the Center.
Come January 1, a new company will run the Oxnard Performing Arts Convention Center.
“We are not sure what the future is going to be here at the PACC,” said Carolyn Mullin, executive director at the PACC.
This comes after City Manager Alex Nguygen proposed closing The PACC in July to tackle the multi-million dollar deficit. But after a public outcry the city decided to keep the doors up until January 1.
In the meantime, the city interviewed potential candidates to take over the performing arts center.
“The city went out for proposals and received several including ours,” said Gary Blum, chairman of the Oxnard Performing Arts Center. “Our nonprofit should be part of the that component, not to the degree we want it to. We want to be fully in operation, but that is all to be determined in the coming weeks.”
Blum says they want to continue to operate the center, but there’s other companies in the running.
“The three initial bidders were Lazer Broadcasting, which is based here in Oxnard, Venue Tech, which is based in San Francisco and operates small to medium size performing arts centers for cities, and then ourselves, the Oxnard Performing Arts Center Cooperation in partnership with Sterling Ventures,” said Blum.
The Oxnard Performing Arts Center Corporation has been running the center on its own since July.
“It was quite a challenge at the beginning. We had a number of layoffs with the city, I too was a city employee that was laid off during the budget cut process and it left a lot of our top tear management positions open, but it gave us an opportunity to recruit some of the best talent that you can find,” said Mullin. “Our new stage manager is the keyboardist in Steely Dan, which is exciting.”
During the last five months the PACC has been able to honor all the existing contracts through the year, and even re-introduced some new programs.
“For the first time, NardCore has come back to the PACC,” said Mullin. “This is a punk rock shows that used to happen here in the '80s and early '90s. We have definitely seen an uptick in the attendance at the PACC, including our youngest audience members and that is everyone from teenagers down to elementary kids. So we are excited to be kind of reinventing ourselves.”
Tuesday night’s council meeting focuses on the future of the PACC before the final decision will be made on December 3.
