The reason Manteca doesn’t have a community performing arts center is due to either the lack of willingness, stubbornness, or — worse yet — “empire building” and not because of the lack of a facility.

And it can be tracked back to two organizations: The City of Manteca and the Manteca Unified School District.

The city has a performing arts center on its parks and recreation masterplan programmed as a 40,000-square-foot facility combined with a library.

Anyone who believes Measure Q sales tax coupled with growth fees are enough to knock off other needs/wants to the point a city-owned performing arts center will be built are either hideous at math or else delusional.

But what could be done is to use Measure Q money to make enhancements to create the perfect solution considering limited taxpayer resources.

The solution is to make the Dorothy Mulhvill Performing Arts Center on the northeast corner of the Manteca High campus at Garfield at Yosemite Avenue function as a dual facility for the city and school district.

The roughly 240-seat venue has been upgraded by the district in recent years.

The Manteca High campus is either downtown, or on the edge of it, depending upon your definition.

As such, the $980,000 downtown “master plan” the city has commissioned needs to weigh seriously a joint proposition to maximize what is in place that could not just for Manteca High students but to provide a community venue for concerts, theatrical productions, and recitals.

If done right, it could not only help enrich Manteca High performing arts endeavors but also provide the opportunity to improve the drawing power of downtown just like the Grand Theatre does in Tracy.

It could even become a venue to hold council meetings given the limited space at the Civic Center.

It may require adding support space — storage, offices, or even an auxiliary performance area.

New space could include housing static arts and associated programs to enable Manteca to expand cultural recreation

Manteca could tap into growth fees collected for parks and recreation amenities or even the Measure Q sales tax to add physical improvements.

It could even be wired for all audio visual needs for such gatherings to provide live feed to the Internet or cable TV of activities taking place.

Manteca city leaders over the years have talked about:

*A 15,000 square foot civic auditorium in the 1970s as a second phase of the Civic Center where the dog park is today.

*An 800-seat stand-alone performing arts center — a concept they spent money on exploring with a consultant on a preliminary basis in 2002.

There was even a community push 24 years ago that went nowhere because city leaders said they lacked the money to do anything.

An 800-seat venue sounds awesome, but before you can run you have to learn to walk.

Having a joint use facility that seats 240 people would provide the city recreation and parks department with a venue to program cultural endeavor and even bring back a community-based theatrical group to stage plays

A joint use approach designed not to interfere with school use would give the community a venue that it lacks. It would be the catalyst for a lot of cultural enrichment such as happened in Tracy and Lodi.

And that enrichment also benefits students based on the cultural opportunities a community venture can being to Manteca.

A 2,000 to 3,000-square-foot static arts center built on the city’s dime on school district property would provide another element to downtown that other communities have but Manteca lacks.

Such a venture maximizes tax dollars and it also is a step toward boosting cultural activities in the community in a bid to provide as much emphasis as we now do on recreation athletics.

The nearly $1 million this city is spending on a downtown master plan needs to take into account maximizing all existing opportunities to create the best possible downtown for the community.

The Manteca High performing arts center is literally within four blocks of the center of downtown and sits on the stretch of the Yosemite Avenue corridor where much of the attention will be spent.

Yes, the city buying the IOOF Hall and accompanying parking lot is a bold move — as noted by City Manager Toni Lundgren — in a bid to maximize its potential conversion to benefit downtown’s future.

Equally bold, would be partnering with the school district to add a performing arts venue/static art gallery to the downtown mix without breaking the bank.

It is the most logical, and perhaps the only way, for Manteca to have a programmable performing arts center.