By Katie Nelson

Various groups representing the arts and culture scene in Burien met at the Burien Library on June 29 to discuss their ideas and plans for the future.

Organizations represented included the Highline Historical Society, the Model Railroad Club, the Burien Arts Association and the Hi-Liners Theater.

The meeting was headed by Dan Mathews, co-owner of independent commercial real estate firm Kidder Mathews, and began with testimony from several groups on how arts and culture are flourishing in Burien.

Cindi Upthegrove, from the historical society, shared an update on the efforts to build a Highline Heritage Museum. In addition to preserving local history, the museum also plans to host other exhibits from across the country.

“It’s specifically a museum building to accommodate traveling Smithsonian exhibits,” Upthegrove said. “We’ve applied to be a Smithsonian affiliate as soon as we open, so it would be possible for us to bring traveling exhibits to town.”

The museum was issued a building permit from the city of Burien this past week.

Another representative present was John Unbehend of the Burien Arts Association, who relayed his desire to create a joint theater and gallery space in order to display both the performing and visual arts.

“Our goal there is to have six to eight shows a year [and] some workshop space for figure-drawing classes,” he said. “There’s a lot that we’re trying to do with the resources that we have.”

Unbehend added that he recently signed a two-year lease for a gallery space in Olde Burien for the purpose of building the theater.

Part of the brainstorming session included discovering ways to integrate multiple needs in creating resources that could serve more than one arts group.

Gerry Gilbert, president of local children’s theater group The Hi-Liners, currently shares space at the Burien Annex with the Burien Little Theatre. He said the space can become crowded when two groups are rehearsing.

“Somewhere in the 200-seat range would allow us some nice seats, a lobby area where you could have art displayed ... It would be really great if we could have space that is smaller than the PAC (Highline Performing Arts Center), but not huge,” he said.

Maggie Larrick, managing director of Burien Little Theatre, agreed more room is needed, and expressed a desire for better amenities, specifically a large dressing room with a movable wall to separate male and female actors.

“I’ve looked at the idea of a multi-purpose room, and that’s something that would be functional for … parties and other kinds of things that it might have been used for before,” she said.

Together, the various organizations began writing down suggestions on how to improve performing space. One of the most well-received suggestions was the possibility of serving alcohol to a designated section of the theater during performances.

A recently passed law in Washington State is allowing certain small movie theaters to sell alcohol to patrons over 21. The law, which will go into effect on July 27, could possibly be further extended to include live theater, according to Larrick.