The city must decide what to do with its current lease agreement at its Miramar location, while at the same time decide how to manage its newly acquired MPAC property.
By Olivia Damavandi / Staff Writer
Now that the city has purchased the Malibu Performing Arts Center, it must grapple with how to manage the property, which it bought for $15 million in June. City officials hope it will become Malibu’s new City hall in less than a year.
In addition, the city must decide whether it will terminate the long-term lease agreement at its current location, the Miramar building adjacent to MPAC on Stuart Ranch Road, which costs more than $800,000 in rent annually. The 15-year lease was signed in 2002, but the city in 2011 can opt to terminate it or find tenants to sublease the building.
City Manager Jim Thorsen on Monday said the decision is contingent on the move-out date, but that the city will continue to seek prospective tenants for the Miramar offices.
The city bought MPAC last month in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings by former owner Vineyard Christian Fellowship. The 35,000-square-foot center houses a state-of-the-art recording studio (utilized by music artists such as Barbra Streisand and Tom Petty, among others), a 500-seat theater and dance studios.
Approximately 20,000 square feet, divided on two floors, will be used as a city hall, but what will become of the remaining facilities has not yet been determined.
“At this point we want to keep the theater and recording studio,” Reva Feldman, the city’s administrative services director, said Monday in a telephone interview. “Our escrow doesn’t close until August 1. We don’t have possession of building yet, so there’s a limit as to what we can do.”
Also unclear is whether the city will continue to rent the center’s dance studios to Dance for Kids, a remaining tenant from the building’s previous ownership.
“We are working on that issue,” Feldman said.
The city on Friday began seeking proposals for consultants to provide a space needs assessment, design and architectural services for the renovation of the MPAC building.
“We need to make it into a usable office space, which it is not right now,” Feldman said. “It’s a performing arts center.”
The additional employment of a management company could also be required if the city decides to rent out the facilities for public use.
Councilmember Jefferson Wagner last week said that all income-generating aspects of MPAC would be retained as much as possible, including the recording and sound systems, the 500-seat theater, dance studios and parking facilities.
Gene Shiveley, board member of Vineyard Christian Fellowship and former head of Malibu Performing Arts Center, would not disclose the public rental rates that existed under his jurisdiction, but said Tuesday in a telephone interview that continuing the public rentals would behoove the city financially.
“I think without question it [the public rental of the facilities] would bring the highest and most valuable source of income, much more than office space, if they’re [the city is] looking at it as an income-producing situation,” he said.