BORNSTEIN: Curious eyes owning its home venue

Published October 6, 2007 at midnight

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Forget rumors you've heard of a housing bust. At Curious Theatre Company, home ownership is just a few months away.

The company hopes to receive financing in the next few weeks to purchase the Acoma Center, 1080 Acoma St., where Curious has resided since its first production in 1998. The 1890s church, with a midcentury addition, is owned by developer Mickey Zeppelin.

"We are in the final stretches of completing our financing package," says artistic director Chip Walton.

The company hopes to get approval from a state agency, as well as the city's Office of Economic Development, to complete 90 percent of the building's $800,000 purchase price in the form of loans. The repayment on those loans would be about the same as the company currently pays in rent. Curious plans to raise the remaining 10 percent, the down payment, through private donors.

Originally, the company had hoped to close on the building in July, but pushed the date back to next April. "Part of the reason we asked for the extension was so that we could finish the year really strongly financially," Walton says.

With a strong fiscal year, the company hopes to be more attractive to foundations. Foundations also play into the decision to buy the building at all. Many a company has grown too fast, burying itself in debt.

"It's long-term stability, not only from an operational standpoint, but in the eyes of funders," Walton says. "It sends a message that this organization is here, they're stable, they're not going anywhere."

Owning the building is only the beginning. There are repairs to be made, a full structural analysis to be conducted.

"There's deferred maintenance on the building, for sure," Walton says. "If we didn't buy the building, in all likelihood it would be torn down and something else would be built."

Walton has "a grand vision which may or may not ever come to fruition," he says, that includes a second performance space, a rooftop café and bar, an upper-lobby lounge and an onsite scene shop. His board prevailed on him to take things one capital campaign at a time, beginning with the building purchase.

"That's why we're moving slowly and smartly," he says. "I had several very wise board members who just said, 'You know what, don't go for the whole shooting match right now.' " ALSO AT CURIOUS: In unrelated news, the theater is bending its policy against outside rentals for a one-night-only theatrical production of Voices of a People's History of the United States.

Based on Howard Zinn's leftist history book, the play, by Zinn and Anthony Arnove, includes a trove of local performers: singer Hazel Miller as Sojourner Truth and Billie Holiday, composer David Amram as the Shawnee leader Tecumseh, singer Patrick Mason as Eugene V. Debs and Woody Guthrie, and Martin Luther King biographer Vincent Harding as the civil rights leader.

Arnove directs and narrates the production at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 15. Tickets are $7 to $10 at the event, sponsored by Paradigm Publishers, the Denver Public Library and KGNU Radio. Information: 303-245-9054.

Lisa Bornstein is the theater critic. bornsteinl@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5101

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