Arvada Center at 50: A Community Treasure Rooted in Creativity, Connection, and Local Impact
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Fifty years on, a city-born arts hub blends public partnership with hands-on creativity—on stage, in classrooms, and across free galleries.
The day starts quietly—kilns warming, curators adjusting lights—then crescendos as classes fill and audiences gather. Fifty years on, the Arvada Center moves like a small city, a place where students, artists, and neighbors share the same halls. Before the doors even open, the building comes alive with small rituals—risers rolling, notes pinned to a rehearsal board—and by mid-morning it hums with motion. What began as a city department has matured into a civic home where public partnership turns creativity into everyday life. “We opened in 1976 and then we became our own 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2016,” said Sarah Kolb, the Center’s Director of Marketing & Communications. “So the organization’s almost 50 years old and the nonprofit is almost 10 years old.”
From city department to independent nonprofit
When the Arvada Center opened on July 4, 1976, it was a confident statement that culture belongs in the same conversation as infrastructure. For four decades the Center operated within the City of Arvada, with the City owning the land and buildings and funding much of the operation. In 2016, the Center transitioned to an independent 501(c)(3) while the City retained campus ownership and key facilities support. The partnership didn’t dissolve—it evolved.
Kolb calls the past decade “interesting,” a time of “navigating forming a new nonprofit and figuring out… what does it look like to have a board and what the structure is.” That careful shift—public roots, nonprofit agility—now underpins how the Center programs its stages, runs its classes, and keeps the galleries free to the public. Today, the galleries remain free and rotate 4–5 exhibitions each year across all three gallery spaces, keeping the experience fresh for returning audiences and first-time visitors alike.
On the ground, that partnership is tangible to the people who open the doors. Rebecka Lovisone—Arvada’s newly elected District 3 Council member and a five-year member of the Arvada Center’s box office team—put it simply: “There’s something really special about ‘waking up’ the art gallery and the museum. Stepping into the historic cabin and turning on the lights feels like connecting directly with Arvada’s roots.” The City’s role, she said, is steadying: “The City’s investment in the building, infrastructure, and the partnership keeps everything running smoothly so the Arvada Center can focus on offering high-quality arts, culture, and educational programming.”
Lovisone also emphasizes the origin story: “The Arvada Center for Arts and Humanities wouldn’t exist without the City of Arvada, Lois Lindstrom Kennedy, and the Arvada Historical Society she founded… Because residents came together to pass a voter-approved and City-sponsored bond issue in 1974, construction began the next year, and the Arvada Center officially opened on July 4, 1976.” As the Center and the Historical Society “grew up together under the City’s care,” she notes they’re now “learning how to spread their wings and operate more independently.”
Stages, studios, and shared work
Walk upstairs and you step into an ever-changing conversation: roughly 10,000 square feet of galleries that are free and open to the public, rotating four to five exhibitions a year with a strong focus on contemporary Colorado and Western artists. Every spring the spotlight shifts to students—“One of the exhibitions we always do every April is this whole space gets filled with high school student art from across JeffCo,” said Kolb. “It’s a way for students who are interested in art to have their [work] displayed in a really professional way.”
That spirit carries through the rest of the building: accessible, curious, proudly local. Step out of the galleries and you’re still in the same civic home—past the box office, toward classrooms, into theatres—where professional work and community learning live side by side.
The two theatres supply the heartbeat. The Main Stage anchors large-scale productions while the Black Box reshapes itself for intimate plays, cabarets, and theatre-in-the-round. That flexibility isn’t just aesthetic—it’s economic—letting the Center balance familiar titles with fresh work, build audiences with one show and surprise them with the next, and keep more creative jobs in Colorado. As Kolb put it, “We do drama, music… we have a dance program, we have a youth symphony program,” a breadth that adds up to more than programming: it’s one of the state’s larger year-round employers of creative professionals—designers, technicians, teaching artists, and front-of-house teams.
Audiences are meeting the moment too: “The Mousetrap ended about 30% ahead of sales projections,” an early-season signal that people are eager to gather again.
Behind the scenes, the place runs like a craft studio and a small company at once: carpenters and stitchers, scenic painters and electricians, stage managers and sound engineers, teaching artists and box-office staff. It’s also a volunteer magnet—300+ strong—who usher, assist in classrooms, and turn each performance into a welcome. Those human details are how a building becomes a community: someone greets you at the door, a teaching artist remembers your kid from camp, and a seamstress’s last stitch holds through the curtain call.
Education at the core
If there’s a single through-line, it’s education. Field trips, residencies, classes, camps, and student matinees braid the arts into school life across the metro area. “In the '23–'24 theatre season, we served 24 Arvada schools,” said Kolb. “We served 81 JeffCo schools in the same theatre season.” During the school year, teachers can book Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA)—hour-long productions geared to K–5—alongside hands-on workshops or a gallery/sculpture-field visit, so a single trip can cover both a performance and a hands-on activity.
Summer becomes its own ecosystem. “We have a gigantic summer camp program. It’s about 5,000 kids that come here between June and August,” Kolb said—“really fun [and] a little chaotic.” Camps serve ages 3–18, and the pipeline continues year-round: the education team runs 600+ courses across visual arts, ceramics, theatre, dance, music, photography, and humanities—so a student who discovers clay on a field trip can come back for a class, and later audition for ensembles like the Front Range Youth Symphony.
Access is built in. Scholarships are available for children through adults and can be applied to a class, workshop, or camp; outreach programs bring one-hour arts workshops to schools and community sites when travel is a barrier. “The more people use [discounts and scholarships], the more it’s easy for [us] to make pitches that they’re important,” Kolb noted. And every spring, TYA turns the building electric. It’s “really the most magical time to be in the building,” she said, “because there are 500 kids a day coming in, often [for] their first introduction to live performance.” That first spark is the point—start with a field trip, follow with a class, return for a concert, and keep the cycle going.
From the Council dais, Randy Moorman connects those dots—art and economics, access and pride. The Center, he said, is “one of our largest gems,” offering professional performances “on caliber with DCPA (without the parking hassles).” The ripple effect is tangible—patrons “come to see a show and also stop and shop in Olde Town or dine at our many restaurants.”
Finances and civic partnership
Recent filings show steady programming with higher costs in 2024 causing a shortfall, while 2023 had a modest surplus. As Kolb put it, it “was a slow climb back from the pandemic,” and while “revenue and attendance is really back to what it was pre-pandemic,” “things just cost more.” The work now is “figuring out what the strategies are to have longevity into the future.”
Year-over-year (rounded)
FY2023: Revenue $13.8M vs. expenses $13.5M → small surplus of $0.3M
FY2024: Revenue $13.5M vs. expenses $14.6M → cost-driven shortfall of -$1.1M
FY2024 at a glance
Assets: ~$3.32M Liabilities: ~$2.02M Net assets: ~$1.29M
Revenue mix: ~52% contributions / ~45% program services / ~3% rental/other
Largest cost driver: personnel (e.g., other salaries & wages ~$5.0M)
That financial picture set the stage for City Hall. In August 2025, Council approved a $1.624M advance on a 4–2 vote (Fifer and Marriott dissenting), split into two installments with the second contingent on the Center working with a financial-sustainability consultant. The split vote reflected different approaches to the same goal—long-term stability with clear accountability.
Former Council member John Marriott articulated a caution many budget hawks share: “the Arvada Center has got a big problem in that its expenses greatly exceed its revenue and have for some time, and adding more revenue to them this one time only just prolongs the inevitable.” Read in context, it’s a reminder that one-time cash should not substitute for structural fixes, and that the City has a duty to test assumptions before committing funds.
Supporters reached a similar endpoint—durability—but favored a bridge paired with conditions. Council member Randy Moorman pointed to communities that weathered the pandemic by “build[ing] their economic engine on the uniqueness and cultural aspects of their community,” describing the Center as a civic “keystone species.” In practical terms, the contingent second installment is designed to pair near-term liquidity with outside guidance on long-run sustainability—so the conversation stays focused on cost discipline, diversified revenue, and measurable outcomes rather than short-term relief alone.
50th anniversary season — what to see & how to purchase
This milestone season mixes big-tent musicals with intimate plays and family picks—an easy way to plan a night out without endless scrolling.
Now playing: Disney’s Frozen — Nov 21, 2025–Jan 4, 2026 (Main Stage). Holiday-season spectacle with local talent front and center.
Coming up: Romeo and Juliet — Feb 13–Mar 29, 2026 (Black Box). Shakespeare’s timeless heartbeat in a room built for immediacy.
Coming up: Come From Away — Mar 27–May 10, 2026 (Main Stage). Community, kindness, and music—an uplifting capstone for a milestone season.
Family pick: TYA — Junie B. Jones, The Musical — Main Stage Jan 23–Feb 27, 2026; Black Box Apr 17–May 8, 2026; select Saturdays Feb 14–May 2 at 11:00 a.m. & 1:00 p.m.
Buying is straightforward: grab season or single tickets at arvadacenter.org, choose Main Stage for spectacle, Black Box for up-close storytelling, or TYA for field trips and weekend family shows, and arrive a little early to wander the free galleries before curtain. Affordability is part of the mission—key options include ACCESS Tickets (set number of $20 seats for every production, excluding opening nights), Rush Tickets (deeply discounted one hour before showtime at the Box Office), group discounts (for 10 or more guests), SNAP/EBT discounts (up to four $10 theatre tickets and four $6 TYA tickets per household), and scholarships for classes and camps.
Closing: a civic home, still becoming
Step outside the stages and galleries and you’re in the sculpture field and plazas—a place for everyday use as much as special events. As Kolb put it, people “walk their dogs and poke around,” and there are “big picture dreams about xeriscaping it and making it more walkable.” Inside, the near-term work is practical and people-focused: expand classroom and rehearsal space, improve energy efficiency, and keep staging flexible enough to swing from a blockbuster musical to an intimate drama. Programmatically, the recipe stays the same—pair recognizable titles with risk-taking work and keep elevating statewide voices in the galleries.
To widen the welcome even further, Lovisone has proposed expanding the Center’s arts-and-culture festival into a coordinated, citywide event that unites cultural partners on a single platform. The aim is simple: make it easier for first-time visitors to try the Center, strengthen ties among local organizations, and create a highly visible moment that brings the community together. After fifty years, that’s the promise—a civic home that keeps making space on stage, on the walls, in classrooms, and out on the plaza. If you’re ready to plug in:
See a show. Pick a Main Stage musical or a Black Box play; educators can explore student matinees.
Visit the galleries (free). Make an evening of it with dinner nearby.
Support access. Use (or share) ACCESS, Rush, and SNAP/EBT discounts—and, if you’re able, give to scholarships.
Tickets, Camps & details: arvadacenter.org.
