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Overview of Project

 

Building a Worship and Performing Arts Center on the Messiah campus has been a dream of the administration and faculty since the 1990s. Because of the rapid growth in the School of the Arts, and because building costs have fallen in the recent difficult economy, the time is now to move forward to make this dream a reality.

 

The existing Climenhaga Fine Arts Center is currently utilized to full capacity and can no longer meet the demands of our growing arts program. The High Center for Worship and Performing Arts will provide 92,000 square feet of much-needed and dedicated space for both our theater and musical arts programming, including an expanded performing arts venue with seating for 825, and a choir loft seating 140-160, to be used for concerts, public lectures, and chapels. Students of the arts will benefit from having acoustically sound space in which to practice and perform in front of fellow students, faculty, parents, and community members.

 

The facility will augment an already strong campus worship experience and will expose students, faculty, and the greater community to an array of performances by gifted artists.

 

Messiah seeks to fully embrace the ideals of hospitality and community by using this new performing arts expansion to enhance both on-campus and off-campus connections with the arts. Moreover, the College will invite the greater Harrisburg community to interact with the campus through the integration of learning and the arts that is core to a comprehensive liberal arts academic experience.

 

The fundraising goal for this project is $19 million.