As part of the University’s plans to establish an “arts district” in the vicinity of the Cantor Arts Center, a New York design firm has been selected to develop plans for a new 900-seat performing arts center between Campus Drive and Lasuen Street.

Scheduled to open by 2012, the performing arts center will eventually be joined by an adjacent 500-seat theater, an outdoor theater garden and a cafe with informal performance spaces available. The University envisions that these buildings will make this area the center of lively arts on campus. Polshek Partnership Architects of New York was selected to design the performing arts center following a five-month review process.

“Construction of the [performing arts center] should begin in about two years and will last for about two years,” Assistant Vice President for Arts Karen Nagy wrote in an email to The Daily. “The time between now and then will be spent designing the facility and getting the construction documents completed and approved.”

Once completed, the performing arts center is expected to provide a venue for a variety of theater, dance, vocal, concert and other artistic performances from Stanford Lively Arts and the Department of Music, as well as for any number of student groups and visiting outside performers. Nagy claimed that the development of the performing arts center is just one part of the Stanford Arts Initiative, which “seeks to strengthen arts programs across the campus, both within the existing arts departments and through the student residences.”

Polshek Design partner Richard Olcott said that his design team is about to begin the designing phase of the project. While actual blueprints for the project are still a ways off, Olcott said that, after discussing the project with members of Lively Arts, his team does have an idea of what it is looking to accomplish.

“I think one thing that is very important to everyone there is the preservation of the natural landscape,” Olcott said, referring to the wooded areas surrounding the planned site. “Another thing that has been clear in our talks with Lively Arts is accessibility.”

Because of the proximity of the proposed center to Campus Drive and one of the main entrances to campus, Olcott said his team was looking to make the structure appear as welcoming as possible. Furthermore, he claimed they will try to form the aesthetics of the center with the theme of Stanford in mind.

“We’re going to try to do both,” he said. “I think it will be a frankly modern building, but we’ll also try to make it fit in with the historic design of the campus.”

Stanford currently has several venues available for live performance, including Memorial Auditorium, Pigott Theater, Roble Gym and several others. With the construction of the performing arts center and its adjacent structures, the artistic hub of campus may shift largely to the area surrounding Cantor, but Nagy does not expect the shift in focus to hasten the abandonment of the older structures.

“The demand for performance spaces on campus is great,” she said. “At this point we assume that most of the current performance venues will continue to be used for that purpose, with facilities upgrades as needed and possible.”

William Von Hoene ‘08 agreed.

“This initiative is an important one, given that there always seems to be a crunch for student performance spaces,” he wrote in an email to The Daily. “More space is more freedom, more freedom is more fun, more fun is more creativity, more creativity is more love.”

Polshek Design will collaborate with Nagata Acoustics and Fisher Dachs Associates on the performing arts center project. The project has been financed through a $50 million gift from Helen and Peter Bing ‘55.