Performing Arts Center

With construction of Baltimore's Hippodrome Performing Arts Center now under way, the Maryland Stadium Authority has brought on new architects and design consultants to help finish the project. The state agency has engaged the local firm of Schamu Machowski Greco to make sure the $62.7 million project is built according to previously approved plans. Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, the prominent New York firm that was hired in 1998 to design the center will be "on call" to the agency during the construction period but will not have any day-to-day involvement.

The Howard County Arts Council has landed a $75,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to expand its artist-in-residence program for professional performing and visual artists who'll develop projects in county schools and community sites.The money, which will be spread over three years, will be divided into smaller grants and redistributed by the arts council to new participants in its 6-year-old artists-in-education program, said the group's president, Michael Galeone."The artists are either educators themselves or professionals," said Theresa Colvin, spokeswoman for the arts council.

A Columbia Association committee will recommend this week that the board of directors not approve giving $200,000 toward the construction of Howard Community College's visual and performing arts building. The three-member Columbia Association external relations committee, assigned by the board the task of venting the pros and cons of a donation, agreed Thursday night on a 2-0 vote with one abstention to oppose the donation. The committee's recommendation will be presented to the board of directors Thursday, when a vote is expected.

IN WHAT WAS surely a rare moment for Bob Hope, he found himself sitting in front of military men instead of performing for them.The entertainer who has brought goodwill and one-liners to countless soldiers and troops during his five decades of entertaining got a taste of his own medicine this weekend when midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy treated him to a musical salute.They also thanked Hope by naming a new performing arts center in his honor."This is the best thing that has ever happened to me since NBC named a speed bump after me," he joked to the audience of roughly 6,000.

Superintendent Michael E. Hickey has rejected the idea of a performing arts magnet program at Wilde Lake High School, despite the $1.2 million arts center being built there as part of the school's ground-up reconstruction."

Pikesville boosters trying to raise $2 million to renovate and to expand the old Pikes Theater into a performing arts center are preparing for a big gift from the state.A capital budget bond bill to provide $500,000 in public funds if boosters can raise a matching amount by June 1996 appears certain to be enacted by the General Assembly. Northwest area legislators who back the project already were celebrating yesterday.Dels. Richard Rynd, Ted Levin, Leon Albin and Samuel Rosenberg and Sens.

The proposed $60 million performing arts center at Park Place in Annapolis could host performances ranging from homegrown productions to national tours of Broadway shows. The design, which representatives of the Park Cos. have begun showing to city community associations, calls for a 1,200-seat theater and a smaller performance hall seating 250 inside the massive hotel, office and residential complex on 7 acres near Westgate Circle, said Jerome J. Parks, vice president of the company. "Literally, the sky would be the limit," he said.

Continuing its push into the northwest suburbs, the Baltimore Jewish Community Center has announced plans to build a 550-seat performing arts center on its Owings Mills campus.Construction of the $3.2 million facility on Gwynnbrook Avenue is to begin in the spring and take 18 to 24 months to complete, according to JCC Vice President Joseph Meyerhoff II.The new auditorium will be the only performance space of its size with multi-use capabilities in the Baltimore metropolitan area, Mr. Meyerhoff said.

Baltimore's genteel theater community is embroiled in a bruising legal fight over plans to stage the wholesome Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "State Fair" in January.After deciding the show's quality was not adequate and might be underfinanced, the Baltimore Center for the Performing Arts (BCPA) removed it from the Mechanic Theatre schedule, replacing it with Chita Rivera in "Kiss of the Spider Woman.""State Fair" producers fired back with a letter accusing the center of defrauding subscribers and jeopardizing the show's 25-city tour.

Ever since the Royal Theater on Pennsylvania Avenue closed its doors with a concert by Count Basie and his orchestra 30 years ago, Baltimore has been without a nationally known theater featuring African-American artists and performers.A group of community activists is hoping to change that. Yesterday, they announced they have received $700,000 in grants to help transform the auditorium of the old Douglass High School into a 1,200-seat performing arts center."A city that loses its art, its culture, its history, is not a civilized city," said 4th District Councilwoman Agnes B. Welch, a 1943 Douglass graduate who is heading a fund-raising campaign by the school's alumni association.