Buy a seat at JPAC - help raise funds

If you walk by the big brick building on 153rd Road and Jamaica Avenue, you will think it is a church. It actually used to be the First Reformed Dutch Church.
But now this building is the future home of The Jamaica Performing Arts Center (JPAC), a new branch of The Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (JCAL), a non-profit institution providing free and low-cost art programs to people from southeast Queens and beyond.
The center has been raising money for the new building, which is expected to open this fall - but funds have been trickling in rather than flowing.
The new center will have a 400-seat theater that will feature concerts and dance performances as well as film and theatrical productions, said Zuri McKie, executive director of JCAL. But the community will also be able rent the building for non-art occasions such as conferences because the 325 seats on the main stage floor can be
“It’s a lovely space; the design is multi-purpose,” she said.
The center needs the new building because the current one, on 161-04 Jamaica Avenue, is bursting at its seams with its theater space of only 99 seats, McKie explained.
To raise money for some of the new building’s anticipated operating costs, the center started a “Take Your Seat” campaign in March, an initiative common to all new theaters.
Through this tax-deductible donation, one can buy a seat on the main floor for $500 or a row of 12 seats for $5,000. A balcony seat costs $100. The donor can personalize the seat by having the center inscribe a message of their choice on a brass plaque mounted on the seat.
The target is to raise between $100,000 and $150,000 with this campaign, which is expected to close within a year, said McKie. However, the center will need at least $700,000 per year for operating costs, McKie added. “The lion’s share of operating costs will probably come from rentals,” she said.
McKie said the campaign has attracted only two donors so far - Citibank and The Greater Queens Chapter of the Links, Inc., an organization that helps women recover from abuse. Each has sponsored a row of 12 seats on the main floor, said McKie.
“We are moving slower than initially intended because businesses and individuals are looking at their finances. Nobody knew that when the building would be finished it would coincide with an economic downturn,” McKie explained.
The construction of the new center cost over 20 million dollars and took four years, said McKie.
The current center, in existence for 35 years, features a theater, a visual arts gallery and studios for painting, dancing, and music.