Morgan Hill cultural center unique in South Valley
By SHERRY HEMINGWAY
Pinnacle Correspondent
Lost in the clamor over the opening of the Morgan Hill
Community
&
amp; Cultural Center and the not-quite-completed Community
Playhouse is the quite different perspective of artists
– the project’s artists. The architects.
Morgan Hill cultural center unique in South Valley
By SHERRY HEMINGWAY
Pinnacle Correspondent
Lost in the clamor over the opening of the Morgan Hill Community & Cultural Center and the not-quite-completed Community Playhouse is the quite different perspective of artists – the project’s artists. The architects.
The building is a lesson in compromise to other communities. After 12 years of give and take and $21 million spent, the city’s first public building in three decades is like no other in the South Valley.
Any tour of the nearly seven-acre center might start at its main entrance on Monterey Road, designed in scale to provide a strong presence and an extension of the downtown.
Most visitors, however, will arrive at the rear parking lot off Dunne Avenue, where recently a lone architect reflected on the relationship between the roofline and its El Toro backdrop.
The panorama from there encompasses all the major buildings and the outdoor amphitheater, a view that will evolve as the trees and landscaping mature.
“We started with several design options, but we always came back to the Craftsman style,” said Architect Franz Steiner from VBN Architects in Oakland. Craftsman architecture was derived from the Arts and Crafts movement of the early 1900s, when buildings introduced the use of openness, local materials and a rustic or bold-square styling.
“The city wanted a place where the community could get together to celebrate, a place to build their roots to Morgan Hill,” said Steiner, whose firm was responsible for the community & cultural center portion of the project. “People come here because they want to talk.”
City’s Living Room
Entering the red adobe building at the southeast corner, the largest room in the complex, is the 4,000-square-foot Hiram Morgan Hill multi-purpose room enveloped in more than 80 large windows.
“This is the interior living room for the city,” said Steiner.
Visitors enter the room with heads upturned toward the high ceiling with maple slats and custom Craftsman-style chandeliers. At the east end, glass doors open onto the Diana Murphy Rose Garden. The room comes with a stage and removable dance floor. Like all good living rooms, the kitchen – a full professional one – is nearby.
With a capacity of 250 for banquet seating and 300 for assembly seating, the city is counting on the rental revenue from celebrations, receptions and banquets.
Child’s Play
As he walks through the building corridors, which will eventually serve as a gallery for art and sculpture, Steiner talks about how people need an indoor-outdoor connection. He points to the number of doorways that go to the outside onto plazas or terraces.
Steiner veers into the Children’s Pavilion, a glass block square with giant slashes of color in the carpeting and a peaked ceiling of blue sky and clouds. Small, low areas in the glass blocks remain clear so the children can peek out. The area is already being booked for “Mommy & Me” music classes and birthday parties that were previously served by the city’s mobile recreation van.
On the outside, the Pavilion is one of the center’s focal points, with sky blue tile, white plaster and glass blocks capturing attention. At night, the glow of light through the blocks provides a “soft beacon in the center of the place,” said Steiner.
Two fountains, one that will accommodate children and shoot jets when stepped on, the second a Japanese koi pool without fish, will be lighted.
“There was supposed to be fog, but the city nixed the fog,” Steiner said.
What promises to be one of the most dramatic effects is a “dry steam bed abstracted into a string of lights to establish a flow between the two fountains,” said the architect, pointing to a long, wavy trench in the sidewalk. When completed, the glassed-over lighted “stream” will meander across the complex. Like many tasks on a fast track for completion by the Dec. 8 ribbon cutting, a stack of glass blocks lies nearby awaiting installation.
Theater in the Grass
The outdoor amphitheater seats 300 on grassy terraces. The stage is flanked by large trellises that are envisioned to some day be draped in wisteria.
The lawn venue and a smaller playhouse emerged in the plans after opposition caused a 250-seat theater to be cut from the project.
Intended for major performances, Steiner says the space will adapt to “Macbeth, as well as Wednesday night jazz concerts, or an a cappella church choir.”
Rhumba in the Rotunda
Back inside, the smaller cousin of the multi-purpose room is the El Toro Room, which is becoming better known as the Rotunda.
“It is a place of celebration, with a strong presence on the corner [of Monterey & Dunne],” said Steiner.
Here and throughout the center, peaked ceilings mimic the gabled peaks of the playhouse.
Again, the room draws eyes up to the high, octagonal ceiling in maple, before coming down to rest on the hardwood dance floor. The “sprung floor” is considered a dancer’s dream because rubber cushions installed below the wood lessen vibration and noise. Besides seating 100 for banquets, the room will be used for ballet and aerobics classes and the monthly meeting of the Morgan Hill Flower Lover’s Club.
The adjacent patio beckons spontaneous experimentation, with dance footsteps sandblasted into the concrete.
On one visit, Mayor Dennis Kennedy succumbed to a quick try at the tango pattern, bypassing the nearby samba, rhumba and waltz footsteps. Kennedy gave no indication if he will be utilizing his newfound skills at the Dec. 7 Mayor’s Ball, the first public event at the Center.
Ceramics, Fine Arts & Boards
Many of the spaces in the Center will change the way recreation is offered in Morgan Hill. Currently the city’s only dance classes – swing and break dancing – are offered at Gold’s Gym. The opening of the Diana Murphy Room for fine arts and the Poppy Jasper ceramics studio opens the way for introducing classes in ceramics and the wet arts. The ceramics studio will feature potter’s wheels and an outdoor kiln.
Steiner points to an indentation around the studio’s perimeter walls as an illustration of the potential for making the center “uniquely Morgan Hill.” Over time, tiles made by students can be installed within the band.
The building also houses boardrooms for business meetings, as well as an outdoor ticket window.
Gavilan Moves Uptown
When Gavilan College moves its Morgan Hill campus into the gray-green building at the west edge of the Center, the college will be contributing more than a rental check.
“Gavilan will serve to keep the campus busy day and night,” said Steiner, noting that the building’s design is business-like, rugged and student-proof.”
Gavilan has leased more than half of the Center’s 21,000 square feet for eight classrooms and computer labs. City officials are quick to point out the “win-win” of the arrangement: Gavilan didn’t have the money to build, but could pay rent. The city had Redevelopment Agency funds to build the building, but needed operational income. Gavilan will pay the City $135,000 per year on a five-year renewable lease.
An Intimate Theater
The quiet corner of the Center’s grand opening – excepting the pounding of hammers – will be the Morgan Hill Community Playhouse. The conversion of an historic local church into a 187-seat theater is expected to be completed by the third week in January, according to Joyce Maskell, who is serving as project manager for that portion of the project.
“The former sanctuary will continue its historic function as a place for gathering, but a new stage replaces the chancel,” said Greg True, architect with ELS Architecture and Urban Design in Berkeley.
The 80-year-old church is an “historic work and we tried to keep that spirit while inserting a theater in the older building. We kept the things that kept character and tried to restore its dignity.”
Although the playhouse is now more than double its original 3,000-square-foot size, the architect believes the scale of the original building has been maintained. Ornamental Craftsman style details and dramatic arch top windows were also retained.
“It is going to be a really nice theater, very intimate,” said True. The farthest seat in the back row is only 40 feet from the stage.
While the building’s construction continues at the northeast corner of the Center, historical seats from a theater in Campbell have been purchased and shipped back East for reconditioning and cushions.
The South Valley Community Theater (SVCT), which has been performing in high schools and storefronts, will become the resident company of the playhouse. The company will offer five plays a year, opening with a performance of “Lend Me a Tenor” on Feb. 7.
Trade-Offs and Changes
Over the dozen years that the Community & Cultural Center moved along in its development, its concept and design changed. Sometimes the changes were due to public comment, but more often the issue was staying within budget.
Steiner says that in some public projects, less than 50 percent of the original vision comes true. He said he’s seen council members in other cities “throwing things at each other.”
“This is the best experience I have ever had with a city project,” said the architect. “They were visionary and supportive.”
Project manager Bischoff said, “A lot of the cuts were transparent,” in that a type of window was changed but there was no difference in functionality. He felt the greatest loss was when the multi-purpose room was scaled back from 6,000 to 4,000 square feet.
Kennedy laments some of the cuts in landscaping, particularly specimen trees, but believes there will be opportunities ahead to get back some of the items. He hopes donors and fundraising will eventually bring about more landscaping and sculpture. As of last week, he was also looking for some umbrella tables that didn’t make the cut.
Steiner encourages a long view of the Community Center. “It will take many years for it to meld with its surroundings. It will be interesting to come back in five to 10 years and see how it weathers.”
