Schenectady Light Opera Company plans for future

In 2010, after a long search for a replacement for the aging former synagogue on a marginal section of State Street that had been its home since 1971, SLOC bought a three-building campus in downtown Schenectady, on Franklin Street between City Hall and Broadway.

The volunteer-run community theater rehabbed the interior of the church, replacing pews with movable seating tiers and adding a low stage, in time to present three productions last winter and spring for audiences of up to 300 per performance.

Upgraded electrical systems and water pipes installed during phase one, for example, serve the theater building currently, but will also be able to handle the demands of the big new stage house planned for the third phase, scheduled for 2015 to 2018.

[...] SLOC's multiple performance spaces, office tenants, educational components and growing production capabilities will make it a multifaceted community resource, not just a place where, 10 weekends a year, amateur thespians and musicians put on a Broadway show, says Kate Kaufman Burns, who succeeded Harrison as board president.

"There's also been some resistance," she says, from some board members and longtime participants, who fear the project is too big and will distract, or detract, from SLOC's core mission: staging musicals.

"Since we got (into the new building), I'd say we've had some of the best productions in our history," says Burns.

[...] putting on a show isn't enough anymore, Harrison and others leading the development of the performing arts center believe.