Almost two years ago, a retired career Army officer invited all major performing arts groups on the North Olympic Peninsula to a meeting and told them he had a plan to build a multi-venue site in Port Angeles for their productions.
Local arts groups that had never heard of Merwyn Brian Pettyjohn supported his idea, but the Texas native and Port Angeles newcomer quickly found skeptics.
“There were a whole lot of people who said, ‘That can’t happen here,”‘ Pettyjohn said.
But now, with more than a dozen go-getters surrounding Pettyjohn on the project’s board of directors, the proposed $52 million Cascadia Center for the Performing and Literary Arts is steps closer to reality, according to Pettyjohn
But he is among the first to admit that Cascadia’s coffers are far from full.
“We don’t have a whole lot of money right now,” he said. “We just have a few thousand dollars.”
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The rest of the story appears in the Sunday Showcase of the Peninsula Daily News. Click on SUBSCRIBE, above, to get the PDN delivered to your home or office.
