GCAC is approximately one mile from the Santa Ana freeway (Interstate-5), approximately twenty-five miles south of Los Angeles and seventy miles north of San Diego. Located ten miles south of the main campus in the heart of downtown Santa Ana, the art center is a mixed residential, commercial and educational complex. The art center is a 45,000 square-foot, full city-block long and half-city block
deep, three-level structure that houses: live/studio spaces for visual arts graduate students, the Grand Central Main Gallery, Project Room, Education/Teaching Gallery, Grand Central Theater, Gypsy Den Café, Hipcooks, Claudia de la Cruz Flamenco Institute, MASKA, classrooms, and a studio and living space dedicated to the center’s international artist-in-residence program. Santa Ana community activist and visionary Don Cribb and Cal State Fullerton Gallery Director Mike McGee originally conceived the Grand Central Art Center in 1994, as the anchor and catalyst for a ten-square block area in the heart of downtown designated as the Artists Village. The subsequent success of the Artists Village has helped spawn a cultural and economic renewal. The City of Santa Ana purchased and refurbised what was the Grand Central Building—originally built in 1924, the building served as the central market for Orange County up until the 1940s. LA-based architect Steven Ehrlich did the original design for the remodel; Orange County-based Robbins, Jorgensen and Christopher was the executive architectural firm. The project has won numerous architectural awards. Twenty-seven apartments are available for students who have been accepted into the university MA or MFA visual and performing arts programs. Students live and work at Grand Central. Each resident who rents an apartment is assigned a studio and parking at the twenty-four-hour-guarded parking structure on 3rd Street. One of the residential apartments is reserved for the art center’s artist-in-residence program. In addition, an 800-square-foot private studio space is designated for the artist-in-residence. The Grand Central Art Gallery, Project Room and Education/Teaching Gallery feature exhibitions and projects by internationally noted artists. GCAC presents four to six exhibitions a year in each space. The Theater is centrally located in the building. It is configured in-the-round and seats an audience of eighty-five. CSUF’s Theatre and Dance Department schedule the space through their nationally recognized programs.
