SPRINGVILLE — The curtain has fallen on a private performing arts school's stay in a historic Springville theater.
The Villa Theater has been sold, leaving Emerson-Smith College, which has rented the building for 1 1/2 years, without a place to study and perform the dramatic arts.
The new owner, Gavin Grooms, took possession of the theater today.
It will be the third time since 2000 the school has been displaced — and is one of the plot lines in the real-life drama surrounding the sale of the building to another Utah County performing arts group.
Emerson-Smith, a nondenominational college that operates with its companion junior high and high school, the ARTS High School, had been renting with the intent to buy, said Pam Lockwood, the school's director.
Owner Bill Brown said Lockwood had made a verbal offer — but couldn't clinch the deal. "She's had 18 months to buy it," Brown said. "I even offered to carry back 20 percent if she got an 80 percent loan."
Meanwhile, Grooms, who owns Center Street Musical Theater, 177 W. Center in Provo, had expressed interest in the building. When it appeared Lockwood's offer wasn't going forward, Grooms made an offer.
Brown gave Lockwood half a day to match it, she said, but she couldn't do it.
It was a business decision, Grooms said, who says he's had his eye on the theater for more than 20 years. "I had to buy it now for the strength of the timing," he said.
The prime theater season begins in November, he said, and he wants to be ready.
He performed once in one of Lockwood's musicals — but doesn't consider her a competitor nor he the villain. "It's nothing personal. It would be foolish for me as a business person to make a decision based on a perceived vendetta," he said. "I hope she finds a place she can call her own."
Grooms' family has been involved in theater for some 35 years, long before he met Lockwood, he said. He envisions offering two different formats for theatergoers and performers. While the Provo dinner theater does musicals, the Villa will give his family an opportunity to put on dramas, comedies and straight theater.
Lockwood says the displacement is just a "bump in the road."
But it's a bump that may bounce the fledgling college out of town.
Brown, a longtime Springville Realtor, found Lockwood another location in Spanish Fork for the school's theater program, but that may not work, she said.
Disciples of Christ International accredits the institution of about 20 students. The Disciples of Christ or Christian Church was formed in 1832 with Alexander Campbell as its principal founder. Campbell also founded Bethany College in Bethany, W.V.
Between 1836 and 1986, Disciples founded 209 colleges and universities and a total of 485 educational institutions of all types, according to its Web site. The sect now has more than 800,000 members.
The Utah Board of Regents exempts it from state accreditation, as it does other private schools, including Brigham Young University.
Emerson-Smith recently completed its second summer stock at the Villa, and students were looking forward to a fresh season with the popular musical, "The Pirates of Penzance," now scheduled to open in October at the SCERA Theater in Orem for a three-week run. It starts Oct. 18 and runs Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays only and one Saturday matinee on Oct. 29.
Emerson-Smith College will continue to rent the historic Hafen house on South Main in Springville where the ARTS High School opened Wednesday for the winter term, Lockwood said. Many of its arts-prone students don't fit well in a traditional high school setting, but thrive in this school, she said.
Meanwhile, she continues to look for a theater to offer student plays and musicals.
The school started in Orem, but soon moved to Provo where its students performed at the barn above Seven Peaks, a swimming and skating venue. That didn't work well, either, Lockwood said, so it moved again when the Villa became available.
E-mail: rodger@desnews.com