Dear Alumni and Parents of Alumni,
Recently, Jen and I made a $3 million lead gift to the school to launch a project that is very near and dear to our hearts—the construction of a new, state-of-the-art Center for the Performing Arts.
Thank you to the more than 100 of you who have already stepped up and supported this project through your gifts in honor of Cindy Jordan. We are inspired by the gifts from recent alumni and alumni who graduated many years ago, in addition to the many gifts from parents of students who were positively impacted by Cindy over her 40 plus years at CA.
So many alumni have fond memories of theater, music, choir, dance, assemblies, and town hall experiences at CA, all in the school’s existing theater. It has been the “front door” to CA for many first-time visitors to the campus for more than 40 years. Now it is time for a new space to accommodate the school’s expanded performing arts programs.
The current theater building lacks many features to adequately train CA’s students and to prepare them for a future either as a performer or even an arts patron. We believe that for CA to fulfill its mission and stay competitive with its programming, we must invest in creating a space that will provide students with a functional, beautiful, and inspiring place to learn and experience performing arts – whether as a speaker, performer, director, producer, costumer, member of the tech crew, audience member, or otherwise.
The new Center for Performing Arts will be a game-changer for CA. As you can tell from the preliminary drawings, the architects at Shears Adkins Rockmore have superbly designed this space. Composed of stone, metal, and glass, it will have a 500-seat theater, flex space for rehearsing and performing, a large entrance plaza and lobby, dressing rooms, theatrical support spaces, storage, as well as a classroom for things like the Mock Trial program or Speech and Debate. The new Center will also feature state-of-the-art acoustics, air conditioning (!), catwalks, and digital sound and lighting systems.
As soon as the Center for the Performing Arts is funded, the school can begin construction. But we still need to raise about $6.5 million more to ensure a spring 2020 start. Jen and I believe that anything worth doing is worth doing right, and we’re confident that the CA community will rally around this project.
I have to admit that if I had received this email, my first reaction might have been that we have way less money than some other people; so let’s let them take the lead. More than any other capital campaign at CA, the See it Through campaign has involved a broad base of supporters at all levels of giving, and the school is grateful for the hundreds of gifts that have already helped to complete the three other projects that are part of this effort, the Welborn House, Ponzio Arts Center, and the Athletic Center. But we need more help if we’re going to create a Performing Arts Center that will stand for the next 30 to 40 years as a symbol of CA’s excellence.
There are many ways to give:
- Make a gift of stock. (Jen and I didn’t have any cash to contribute. We’re still early in our careers and, as entrepreneurs, still earn less than we did ten years ago. Instead, we found a way by providing a gift of stock that CA was then able to turn into cash.)
- Make a pledge now that you pay over the next three to five years. (Take an amount that’s a meaningful stretch for you and divide it by three or even five!)
- Maybe you work at a firm or company that would consider sponsoring a program or naming something within the Center for the Performing Arts.
- Consider working with others in your family or class year to make a major gift and name the Theater, Main Stage, Lower Lobby, or Scene Shop in honor of a CA teacher who made a difference in your life or your child’s life.
- Support the challenge set forth by the Alumni Board to raise the dollars to name the building’s entry plaza in honor of Cindy Jordan.
Every dollar toward this project helps to reach our goal, and we hope you will choose to give in whatever way is meaningful to you.
Jen and I have seen firsthand all the thought that has gone into this project and would be happy to speak with you about the transformative potential of your gift, not only for CA students, but for the thousands of other children in the Metro-Denver area who will also benefit from this performance space on the weekends and over the summers.
If you would like to join us in making a gift to the new Center for the Performing Arts, you can make a gift online, you can reach out to Gravely Wilson in CA’s Advancement Office.
Thanks for reading this and for joining us in building something special that we’ll all be proud of for years to come.
Bryan and Jen