Constructing the Dream: Work on the Huish Performance Arts and Cultural Education Center Continues Under Guidance of Richard Lindsey

Dr. Gordon Taylor (pictured above) seated inside the Huish Theatre board room during an August 2012 meeting with business leaders who made up the Payson Chamber Leads Group, a group that is no longer active. Richard Lindsey (pictured below) assumed Dr. Taylor’s duties as President of the Huish Performance Arts and Cultural Education Center renovation project earlier this year.

  

TRANSITION

Progress was made on renovation efforts set in motion at the old Huish Theatre in the years that followed its purchase by Dr. Gordon and Karen Taylor in 2008.  By mid-August of 2012, a final three-phase power system was installed inside the spacious theater that Karen had hoped would become the cultural and performing arts epicenter for the local area.  And by May of 2013, the construction of a state-of-the-art stage had taken form.  It appeared there was no stopping the transition of the Huish Theatre into a modern center for the arts.

However, work would come to a halt a year later, after the Taylor home, which was located west of the Huish property, was destroyed by fire.  Dr. Taylor, whose wife Karen had passed away in 2010, moved into a retirement home in Orem, Utah.  When Dr. Taylor passed away on January 8, 2016, the project appeared to reach a complete impasse.

Dr. Taylor had been a prominent figure in the local community.  He served as Payson City Mayor, in LDS church and Boy Scout leadership capacities, as well as President of People Preserving Peteetneet, a part that was instrumental to the historic building’s revival. Dentistry was his profession and he ran a popular practice in Payson for thirty-eight years.  With his passing loomed the question: Might the Huish project continue without him?

While involved with the Peteetneet renovation, which began in the late 1980s, Dr. Taylor developed a skill for grant writing, noted Richard Lindsey, a colleague and friend.  He was able to procure funds in great demand among nonprofit organizations, a skill of high value to the Huish project.

And Dr. Taylor was known as someone who could get things done.  He often did so with the help of community members bringing their own set of expertise.  Under Dr. Taylor’s leadership, Richard Lindsey was brought on to serve as the Huish project’s acoustics and stage development director, assignments he took head on.  A well known engineer, Mr. Lindsey’s work has been behind countless stage productions throughout Utah Valley. With his decades-long experience working in professional and community theater, he designed a stage for the Huish that incorporates elements of what he has found works best.  Enhanced stage technology will improve production quality for performances and audiences whom he suspects will be drawn to the Huish PACE Center in Downtown Payson when it opens in the future.

The question as to whether the work he and others joining him in the Huish renovation project would be in vain that loomed after Dr. Taylor’s passing earlier this year was met with relief.  When Mr. Lindsey received a phone call from the Huish Board’s Vice President Brian Hulet asking him to take the lead was Huish Board Director, Lindsey agreed.

The show would go on.

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