Sugar Land performance venue will be unusually versatile

Sugar Land City Council this week approved the budget for a $74.3 million performance venue. Ground-breaking is set for Dec. 9.

The facility, which will be built by ACE Theatrical, will fill a unique need in the region, said David Anderson, the company's president and CEO.

"We're really excited about the new venue for Sugar Land," Anderson said, "because it fills a niche in the Houston market that is not filled by any existing venue. There are the Theater District arts venues of about 3,000 (seats), such as Hobby Center and Jones Hall, and the 18,000-seat venues such as Toyota Center and the Mitchell Pavilion in The Woodlands. But there's nothing in between, as this facility will be, with its maximum capacity of about 6,400."

Situated on part of a 38.5-acre, city-owned property southeast of U.S. 59 and University, the venue was designed to accommodate a wide range of performances, including music and comedy acts, theatrical productions and other arts events. It will anchor a mixed-used development including retail, office, commercial and residential buildings, with a public plaza and, possibly, a hotel and conference center.

The building's design, which features movable walls, will enable the venue to shrink to a 3,300-seat capacity appropriate for touring shows and other performances requiring smaller spaces.

"Sitting in the smaller, 3,000-seat configuration, you'll really feel you're in a more intimate venue like Jones Hall or Hobby Center," Anderson said. "Not like you're in a 10,000-seat stadium or amphitheater that's just got some curtains dropped in, or turns out some of the lights on all the empty seats. Whether in the larger or smaller configuration, the space will have real, solid walls."

ACE has a long history of successes developing and planning performance venues - and producing the events to fill them. Two of ACE's biggest projects have been the renovations of the historic Saenger Theatre in New Orleans, which opened in September 2013, and the historic Loew's Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, whose two-year restoration is on target for its projected opening in January.

Though Sugar Land City Council's 2013 announcement about the facility anticipated construction starting in summer 2014, the ground-breaking was delayed until December.

"As we got into the design work over the past year," Anderson said, "the complexity of the facility and demands of its flexible structure required more time than we'd anticipated, to get everything perfect on the design side and make everything work in the way we wanted."

A statement released Thursday by the Sugar Land City Council said that, despite the delay, the project would be completed as originally planned:

"Our design and construction team, led by Martinez & Johnson Architecture and Linbeck Group, have worked together with the city and ACE to ensure that we will meet our original anticipated completion date of fall 2016."

Everett Evans

Ebony Opera Guild salutes trailblazers

Houston Ebony Opera Guild will pay homage to singers who helped make African-Americans mainstays in opera today.

Though major U.S. companies began hiring African-Americans barely 60 years ago, today opera stages are the most diverse in the classical-music world.

After singers such as contralto Marian Anderson opened the door, soprano Leontyne Price cleared the way for a flood of women, guild artistic director Jason Oby said. Though fewer African-American men have risen so high, the list includes one of today's most virtuosic singers, tenor Lawrence Brownlee.

The concert will salute Price, Brownlee and others with arias that helped them win acclaim. Excerpts from Georges Bizet's "Carmen" will honor mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves, a onetime member of the Houston Grand Opera Studio; an aria from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte" will recall George Shirley, the first black tenor to perform major roles at New York's Metropolitan Opera.

The performers will include tenor Oby, who heads the voice department at Texas Southern University, and soprano Melissa Givens, who teaches at Florida Baptist University.

The concert will be at 4 p.m. Sunday at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, 800 Bagby; $27-$57; 713-315-2525, houstonebonymusic.org.

Steven Brown