PERRYBLOG: The Colorado Symphony Orchestra deserves a better home — in Aurora

Here’s your big chance to hit the high note, Aurora. Ray Rinaldi of the Denver Post is reporting today that it looks like rumors about Denver wanting to oust the Colorado Symphony Orchestra from its home at the Boettcher Concert Hall at the Denver Center for Performing Arts looks are true. The Post reports that the leading idea for the space is to tear it down and build an outdoor amphitheater. The symphony would have to suck eggs or shack up with Opera Colorado and the Colorado Ballet at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House.

Sad. Very sad. Denver already has an outdoor amphitheater, Red Rocks. A smaller one at Civic Center Park is nothing to sneeze at. If the complaint is that the aging Boettcher Hall doesn’t get enough use, just wait until a Downtown Denver outdoor theater sits vacant 6-9 months a year.

Oh well. Their loss could be Aurora’s big gain. Here’s what we should do. Let’s build the CSO a new home right here. Right at City Center, where the new light-rail line will stop. We can show Colorado that Aurora has the class and classics and classes that Denver’s so anxious to snub. The beloved symphony is just getting started with plans to make what they do more accessible and available to everyone in the metro area. Realize, of course, that the minute the CSO moves into new Aurora digs, they bring with them Tier II status dollars from the Science and Cultural Facilities District. Funding, folks, real funding. In addition to that, the symphony has a loyal following that wants to see the CSO get the respect it deserves. This symphony is innovative, talented and world class. An Aurora center could underscore that instead of sniff at it.

That money and influence could help offset operating expenses for a cultural arts complex in Aurora that has a concert hall as its focal point, complete with other theaters studios and venues that permit a wide range of classical and contemporary concerts, theater, dance and comedy. The complex could house the Aurora History Museum and art studios or even a museum.

This is your chance, Aurora, to make good on decades of ignoring City Center and cultural facilities needs. The site is perfect for a facility like this. It’s near at RTD bus hub. It will be connected to the rest of the region’s RTD light-rail line, allowing easy light-rail access from everywhere. And the site at East Alameda and Sable Boulevard is minutes from Lowry and is easily accessible from I-225.

Best of all, an Aurora cultural arts facility with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra as the centerpiece would finally define what City Center, hundreds of prime acres, will be. Aurora and developers have been struggling to figure out just what to do with a giant chunk of valuable, empty real estate that’s going to have excellent commuter access and a light-rail line. This is it. Instead of a smattering of chain restaurants and ho-hum shops, Aurora can makes this an arts Mecca. This is where the metro area will come for their kids’ dance classes, choir practice, violin lessons. This is where endless summer camps are held and ballet recitals occur. The metro area spends hundreds of millions of dollars on the arts and arts education and everything associated with them. Aurora can parlay this site, some cash, its growing influence, a prime piece of real estate and the goodwill of thousands of CSO supporters into something its been missing for decades.

Don’t sneer. Just think about. The Aurora Center for Colorado Arts. Sounds good.

— Editor Dave Perry