After seven years of planning and construction and $40 million of construction, Austin ISD has built a new Performing Arts Center downtown for the entire district to enjoy.

The PAC contains a 1,200 seat main auditorium, a 250 seat black box theatre, dance studio, multi-purpose room, kiln room, and an individual recording studio that can be used by any Austin ISD school program.

Part of the bond issue voters approved in 2008 included a project to build a performing arts center for the whole district to use. The original plans for the PAC date back to 2004, when district leaders began focusing on an effort to balance the district’s capacity to equally support and provide for performing arts from across the city.

“When the bond was passed in 2008, we began forming committees and organizations, task forces, and a decision- bond committee,” said Greg Goodman, district director of Fine Arts. “And this is what we had been developing and designing for the last seven years.”

Goodman said the center will allow for Austin ISD to host competitions, concerts, and other organized events in a generally central location.

“What we want to do is give the kids at this district and state the opportunity to experience the best – acoustically – and also so that teachers can bring their entire classes here and learn and operate the building,” Goodman said.

The center offers performance opportunities for a wide range of arts, including band, dance and theater. It is also a place to showcase painted, sculpted and other still art.

Akins students already had a chance to perform at the center when the Akins Eagle’s Wind Symphony performed there on Jan. 8 to test the acoustics of the building. They were the first band ever to perform at the PAC.

“The clarity in that facility is amazing,” Akins band director Tate Fincher said. “The sound in there is state of the art, and the acoustics are incredible. Being the first ensemble, being the first band, in that room was pretty cool.”

Fincher said he believes that the Akins theatre will always be the school’s primary performance space. However, the PAC offers a new experience to students that Akins couldn’t offer before.

“This is our home,” Fincher said, “We’re here everyday. Yes, we get dressed up in tuxes, and make it a formal evening, and we go and we perform on stage. But this is a different experience entirely. It adds another element of class and professionalism. It’s a next step.”

Catherine Bennett, Director of Orchestra at Akins, said the new center will help accommodate the large growth in the number of students in fine arts programs that has happened in recent years.

“The programs are getting so big that our theatre stage can’t hold us all,” Bennett said. “We’ve got so many different performing groups – outside groups, inside groups in the school – the theatre is booked almost all the time. The PAC facility is big enough to house everybody.”

The center also presents the opportunity to provide for Akins theatre and technical theatre programs as well. The center is already scheduled to host all of the upcoming UIL competitions. Theater teacher Maureen Siegel said she hopes that theatrical opportunities don’t end there.

“It is my understanding that this was a center for us,” Siegel said. “I would hope that at some point, besides the UIL shows, that our musicals will be able to perform there.”

Goodman said that they hope that the PAC will help raise the prestige, quality and reputation of Austin ISD fine arts programs, while simultaniously pullng all of Austin ISD under one roof.

“I would hope that because there is a push within the district, there is an opportunity to be able to go there for performance,” Siegel said. “It would be really thrilling.”