PVCC Puma Press: March 2003

In a major blow to the construction plans for PVCC's Performing Arts Center (PAC), the PAC committee learned last month of a $1.4 million deficit in the project budget, a figure which has since been reduced to about $350,000 but could still halt the project altogether.

According to PAC committee chairman and head of PVCC's theatre program, Alan Tongret, the architects and construction manager for the project told the PAC committee in a February meeting that the proposed design would exceed the $5.9 million budget by $1.4 million.

The committee has since been combing through plans in an effort to reduce the deficit and the construction manager has been reviewing costs. In a meeting in the first week of February, the committee was able to lower the $1.4 million to $750,000, and within two weeks after that meeting, they lowered the figure to $350,000, he says.

PVCC president Gina Kranitz spoke to the MCCCD about the budget problem in the third week of February, telling them that the committee needs more money for the project, Tongret says. The District told Kranitz to let them know what kind of figure they were looking at. Kranitz will return to district to give them the figure of $350,000 to $500,000 in the end of February, and they will then decide whether or not to help out with the funding, Tongret says.

The PAC committee had previously thought that they were only $.25 million over budget, a gap that architects and the committee believed they could reduce. The architects admitted at the meeting that they should have been more candid, Tongret says, though he points out that the architects weren't deliberately misleading but were too optimistic.

"I haven't detected any lack of conscientiousness on their side," Tongret says. Performing arts centers are generally very difficult to build because of the complexities in design and the many variables that have to be taken into account, such as acoustics. "The committee is unanimous in that we think we have a really good architectural firm."

According to Tongret, the whole picture regarding the budget problem is more positive than it was in the beginning of February, but the problem is not solved yet.

"It's brighter than it was," he says, "but [we don't have] the green light yet. We still have to work hard and wait and see what the District says to Gina."

If the District decides not to help fund the budget overrun, Tongret says, he sees two possible responses to the dilemma.

One possibility is that the PAC will not be built.

"It is not our mandate to build an inadequate facility," Tongret says. He says this sentiment is unanimous across the committee and among administrators at PVCC.

Kranitz agrees, Tongret says.

"If we can't do that," Tongret says, "painful as it may be, we wouldn't be able to build it."

A second possibility is that the school could raise fund and receive donations from the community that would make up the deficit, though Tongret is pessimistic about this possibility.