Evergreen Cultural Centre: the Tri-Cities' stage beside Lafarge Lake

Coquitlam's cultural life has a front door, and it sits on the edge of Lafarge Lake. Evergreen Cultural Centre, at 1205 Pinetree Way in Town Centre Park, is the Tri-Cities' home for live theatre, music, comedy and visual art, and for a venue owned by the city it punches well above its size.

The building

The Centre's main space is a 257-seat black box theatre with configurable seating that can shift from stadium-style rows to a flat floor, which lets it host everything from plays to standing concerts. Around the theatre the building packs in a fully equipped rehearsal hall, four art studios and a 1,500-square-foot art gallery. The whole facility overlooks Lafarge Lake, a short walk from the Lafarge Lake-Douglas SkyTrain station, which makes it one of the easiest arts venues in the region to reach without a car.

The City of Coquitlam owns the building, and the Evergreen Cultural Centre Society, a nonprofit organization, operates it.

What is on

Programming runs the full range: live theatre, comedy, musical concerts, family programming, visual arts workshops and gallery exhibitions. Two relationships define the theatre calendar. The Centre is the home theatre of the Stage 43 Theatrical Society, the community theatre company that stages its season here, and it is part of the Arts Club Theatre Company circuit, which brings the Vancouver company's popular productions to Coquitlam audiences without the drive downtown.

Music has deep roots in the building too. Evergreen is the home venue of the Pacific Symphonic Wind Ensemble and the Coastal Sound Music Academy. And while it has been years since the building hosted the Water's Edge Festival, a 25-hour continuous music marathon that ran here from 2009 to 2011 with hundreds of performers across multiple venues, that event is still remembered locally as proof of what the venue can hold.

The gallery is the Centre's most accessible offering. The Art Gallery at Evergreen is open Wednesdays from 12 to 5 p.m., Thursdays and Fridays from 12 to 6 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays from 12 to 5 p.m., with rotating exhibitions and no ticket required. The box office is now open Monday to Saturday, 12 to 5 p.m., reachable at 604-927-6555.

How to plan a visit

For a show night, the pattern is simple: book through the box office, take the SkyTrain to Lafarge Lake-Douglas station, and leave a few minutes to walk the lakeside path to the venue. Town Centre Park around it offers parking for drivers, and the lake loop makes a natural pre-show stroll. For the gallery, just walk in during open hours.

The theatre's configurable floor is worth knowing about when booking: the same room can feel like a traditional auditorium for a play or an open hall for a concert, so the seating map for one show may look nothing like the map for the next.

Community at the centre of it

What distinguishes Evergreen from a rental hall is how much of its calendar belongs to the community itself. Stage 43's seasons put local actors on a professional stage. The wind ensemble and the Coastal Sound Music Academy rehearse and perform in the same rooms their audiences' kids learn in. The four art studios run workshops for beginners and working artists alike, and the rehearsal hall hosts everyone from dance troupes to school groups preparing for their own stages elsewhere.

That mix is deliberate. A city-owned venue operated by a nonprofit society has two jobs at once: bring in touring work that local audiences would otherwise travel for, and grow the local scene that makes the building busy between tours. Evergreen's calendar, which can move from an Arts Club production one week to a community theatre opening the next, shows both jobs running side by side.

A bigger stage on the horizon

The Centre's ambitions have always exceeded its footprint. A second, 750-seat auditorium has been planned for the site, though it has yet to be funded. For now, the 257-seat room does the work, and its programming, community tenants and gallery make it one of the busiest cultural addresses in the Tri-Cities.

Why it matters

Mid-sized cities often lose their arts audiences to the big city next door. Evergreen is the local counter-argument: a professional-calibre venue beside the lake where Tri-Cities residents can see touring theatre, hear a wind ensemble, or put their kids in an art studio class, all ten minutes from home. For a region growing as fast as this one, it is the kind of institution that keeps culture local. On a rainy November evening, when the lake path is lit and the lobby is full, it is also simply a good place to be.