‘This place is going to come alive': Pride stores founder unveils Hope Center for the Arts

Yahoo

16-05-2025

SPRINGFIELD — Within a parking garage downtown, Pride stores founder Robert Bolduc has nearly transformed the former CityStage theaters into his Hope Center for the Arts.
And in just a few months, the Springfield Symphony Youth Orchestra will do a bit of transforming itself, when it turns the stage into a cornfield.
The kids, Bolduc gleefully explained Friday while leading a media tour through the space, are putting on 'Oklahoma!'
'This place is going to come alive,' Bolduc said of the 500-seat auditorium.
Technicians are still installing lighting and sound equipment, and the new theaters and studios — vacant since CityStage went dark more than seven years ago — still smell of fresh paint.
Bolduc already has three graduations booked for June, and 270 kids signed up for free arts programs that run July 7 through Aug. 1.
Ultimately, he'd like to have 600 students involved in the programs. That's why he, his staff and the Springfield Public Schools showed off the new space Friday.
Kids and their parents can sign up for the free summer programs at the Hope for Youth & Families website at hyff.org or through their school.
The center also is approved as a summer nutrition site, with free breakfast and lunch during the warmer months, Bolduc said.
Bolduc's vision is to not only run his foundation's summer and after-school arts programs but to offer up the space to other regional organizations that showcase the arts and provide arts instruction and enrichment, such as the youth orchestra, which will use the center as its home base.
The venue also will feature a more intimate 100-seat black box theater, as well as a mirrored dance studio.
Both the black box and dance studio have leap-worthy, springy floors, which Bolduc said are the same ones used by the Boston Ballet.
There will be visual arts studios — painting and the like — as well as quiet rooms for creative writing in what was CityStage's costume shop.
Elsewhere will be studios for video and audio production, and practice rooms for musicians — as few as one or as many as an orchestra.
When Bolduc first took The Republican through the youth orchestra's new rehearsal space in February 2024, it was still being used by the Springfield Parking Authority for document storage.
'Every parking ticket going back 100 years,' he said.
All the studios and theaters are connected with audio and visual technology, said Kyle Homstead, the technical director. The main stage in the large theater is getting a 40-foot-long projection screen, and the floor will be set up for projection, as well.
That's how the youth orchestra is going to create 'Oklahoma!'
It's also a place where young people can learn to operate the latest technology, perhaps preparing for careers in the arts, Homstead said.
'This is a place where they can take something from their imagination and make it real,' he said.
Bolduc's foundation bought the theater and studio space from the Parking Authority in 2024 for $1 million. It's a business-condo arrangement within the Columbus Center Garage.
Built in 1984, it was StageWest until 1998. Later, Springfield Performing Arts Development Corp. presented a number of plays there, and attracted top-name theater talent.
Over the years, it hosted Julie Harris as Emily Dickinson in her award-winning 'The Belle of Amherst,' Jack Klugman in 'On Golden Pond,' and John Astin of Gomez Addams fame in 'Edgar Allan Poe's Once Upon a Midnight.'
Bolduc, 81, wouldn't say how much he's spent on the project. But more than a year ago, he estimated $10 million to $15 million in renovations and repairs.
'God has been good to me,' Bolduc said.
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