Valley finally gets another concert hall

The new Valley Performing Arts Center opened officially with a gala on Saturday night. Designed by the Minneapolis firm of Hammel, Green and Abrahamson, the center towers over Nordhoff Street and Lindley Avenue on the Cal State Northridge campus. "When the $125 million concert hall officially opens tonight with a star-studded show and black-tie gala at Cal State Northridge, it will signal more than an architectural triumph. It will place the San Fernando Valley on Los Angeles' cultural map," says the Daily News' Dana Bartholomew. "This is a 40-year dream in the making - and a dream fulfilled," said Vance Peterson, a CSUN VP. "It begins a whole new era of cultural and economic life for the Valley." Well, maybe. In 1964 the Valley Music Theater opened in Woodland Hills to much civic acclaim. It hosted plays and concerts in a theater-in-the-round auditorium, but interest waned and it fell to holding boxing matches before being converted in 1980 to a Jehovah's Witness assembly hall. The Valley Music Theater was razed a few years ago.

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