Performing Arts Center Eastside Announces New Staff Members
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Cheryl Engstrom 425.487.0682
BELLEVUE, WA (May 23, 2003)—Suzanne Hutchinson and Elizabeth Turini have joined executive director Dick Collins on the staff of the Performing Arts Center Eastside (PACE). Collins was enlisted to fill the executive director post this year after serving as a consultant to the board of directors for more than a year.
Collins brings to PACE an extensive arts background as well as significant business savvy, which gives the project both creative direction and fiscal constancy from its inception and construction through opening and into its future operations. During his career, Collins spent several years with IBM where he was responsible for exhibits in major U.S. museums, touring exhibit projects, corporate arts/science collections, and had major involvement in the Seattle and New York Worlds' Fairs. He subsequently served as executive director of the Maine State Commission on the Arts and Humanities and Denver Center for the Performing Arts. In 1979 he founded The Collins Group, a highly successful fundraising business, from which he retired in 2001. Not suited for retirement, Collins has been consulting with arts organizations throughout the country on everything from feasibility studies and fundraising to building and opening performing arts centers.
As the new head of marketing and event planning, Suzanne Hutchinson will spearhead PACE's community outreach, including furthering community awareness of the new performing arts center through meetings, retreats and community events, as well as serving as a liaison for fundraising efforts. Before joining PACE, Hutchinson served as the director of marketing for an interior design firm located in downtown Bellevue. A long-time community advocate, Hutchinson is a founding member of the Bellevue Art Museum and has held positions on numerous civic boards, including serving as president of many organizations in Seattle and the Eastside.
Elizabeth Turini, a senior majoring in communications at the University of Washington, joins PACE as administrative assistant. Turini most recently served as an assistant to the events and tourism coordinator and assistant director of marketing at Bellevue Square.
"Suzanne and Elizabeth fill vital staffing roles," Dick Collins said. "PACE is propelled by the many extraordinary people supporting it—the board, the project team and the staff—but especially by the community whom it is designed to serve."
PACE will bring professional touring productions to Eastside audiences, as well as provide a mid-sized, multi-purpose venue for local arts organizations. The center will feature state-of-the-art technology and a highly flexible seating arrangement to accommodate varying sizes of audiences and also give local performing groups space to grow.
The PACE project team includes recently appointed Los Angeles architects Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates (HHPA), and from Seattle theater design consultant Peder Knudson of Knudson & Ward, project manager Maria Barrientos of Barrientos LLC, and fundraising by The Collins Group.
PACE staff offices are now located in an office building on the site of the future theater at the corner of NE 10th Street and 106th Avenue NE in downtown Bellevue.