The Beaverton Center for the Arts project has a new lead donor and a new name.

Backers announced on Tuesday that the 550-seat theater planned for The Round in Beaverton will be named the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts, after its largest donor. Through the Reser Family Foundation, Pat Reser oversaw a $13 million gift to the project.

The Reser family is well known in Beaverton, headquarters of their Reser Fine Foods. The family-owned firm is known for its line of dips, sides, spreads and potato salads. It employs 4,800 people at 16 locations in the U.S., Mexico and Canada and is one of Oregon's largest privately held companies.

"This center will be a place to celebrate artistic expression in all its forms," Pat Reser said in a statement. "My hope is that it will help artists and arts flourish and will impact residents positively for generations to come."

Beaverton has been working on building a large theater space since at least 2004.

The project as currently conceived will include a 550-seat theater, classrooms, meeting and conference rooms, rehearsal and workshop space, an art gallery, outdoor plaza, parking structure, cafe, lobby and informal gathering areas. It will be located along the light-rail line near the main thoroughfares of Southwest Cedar Hills Boulevard and Southwest Hall Boulevard. Specifically, the arts center will be constructed on what is now a parking lot at the northeast corner of Southwest Rose Biggi Avenue and Southwest Cres Street.

"I really believe we have a once in a lifetime opportunity to transform this community," said Lani Faith, executive director of the Beaverton Arts Foundation. "There's not been any multidisciplinary centers like this built from the ground up in the Portland metro area in the last 30 years."

It's too early to say whether the center will host a resident theatre company, but with arts space at a premium in Portland, there's certainly been interest.

"We want to be sure that our programing reflects our community," Faith said. "Beaverton is one of the most diverse cites in the state of Oregon, and I think we have a lot to celebrate in that."



The project is budgeted at $46 million, with a combination of private and public funding. In 2016, the city of Beaverton approved a 4 percent lodging tax, with proceeds going to a $15 million revenue bond for the project. Beaverton also chipped in $6.8 million from tax increment financing (to pay for a parking lot) and donated the land for the center, valued at $600,000, The Oregonian/OregonLive previously reported.

In addition to the gift from the Reser Family Foundation, the center has a goal to raise more than $11 million in private donations, which includes a $1 million gift already received from the Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation. The Beaverton Arts Foundation is fundraising for the final $9 million.



The project is currently in the design phase, with a goal of holding a groundbreaking in winter 2019 and a grand opening in spring 2021.

-- Samantha Swindler

@editorswindler / 503-294-4031

sswindler@oreogonian.com