OCEAN CITY — The new Ocean City Performing Arts Center is gaining rave reviews from a design standpoint with the announcement of a significant industry award this week.
On Tuesday, the Mayor and Council were presented with an award for the Performing Arts Center from Engineering News Record. Ron Morgan with the Becker Morgan Group, which designed the Performing Arts Center, presented resort officials with the ENR Merit Award in the Mid-Atlantic Cultural Project category.
“We want to share this award with Ocean City,” said Morgan on Tuesday. “We’re all very proud of this project, and it wouldn’t have been possible without our Ocean City partners.”
The PAC was completed in the fall of 2014 and opened to rave reviews last December. The 1,200-seat performing arts theater was part of the second phase of the latest expansion of the Roland E. Powell Convention Center. The third phase of the convention center expansion is now underway. The centerpiece of the second phase was the PAC, a state-of-the-art auditorium that is playing host to shows, theater productions, plays, concerts and other events.
It features two tiers of fixed seating including 850 seats on the first floor and another 350 seats in a second-floor balcony. The total cost of the second phase came in at around $14 million, of which the state committed $5.7 million. The town of Ocean City funded the remaining $8.5 million, largely through a bond sale and a dedicated half a cent on the resort’s food tax rate.
Morgan explained on Monday designing and constructing the PAC created challenges because the Convention Center was open for business.
“It was a tough project because it was an occupied building,” he said. “That created some obstacles, but we were able to overcome them and create this great project and it’s nice to be recognized with this award.”
The PAC has already become a focal point for the resort, according to Councilmember Mary Knight.
“At the open house on New Year’s Eve, we heard a ton of comments from people who had never been to the Performing Arts Center before and it was nothing but positive,” she said. “We were also there for the arts and crafts show in the ballroom with those big windows and people were walking around and marveling at the views and I don’t think they were looking at the arts and crafts. I got such a sense of pride from that.”