A newly built 300-seat performing arts center with a full fly-tower and orchestra pit opened this week at St. Genevieve Parish Schools in Panorama City, capping a $29 million campus overhaul that also delivered a parish hall, an adoration chapel, and updated kindergarten and first-grade classrooms. Rep. Luz Rivas, who represents Arleta, toured the newly renovated West Campus on Monday as the school helped launch the new academic year.
The project, detailed by the Los Angeles Daily News, includes a scene shop, green room, and dedicated choral, dance and music rooms inside the performing arts center, while the adjoining 200-seat parish hall houses a complete catering kitchen, meeting rooms, and parish offices. The kindergarten and first-grade classroom spaces received updated flooring, ceilings, and air conditioning as part of the same renovation. Worker Javier Ortega was photographed laying carpet in the new performing arts center on Tuesday, per the same account, with images captured by Hans Gutknecht for the Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG.
A Design Meant to Bridge Parish and School
The $29 million master plan was designed by architectural firm CSDA Design Group, which describes a project built to physically connect the parish and school sides of the Roscoe Boulevard campus through outdoor courtyards. St. Genevieve Parish Schools, which spans pre-school through high school, is overseen by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. The archdiocese runs the largest Catholic school system in the country, educating more than 65,000 students across 252 schools spanning Los Angeles, Ventura, and Santa Barbara counties during the 2025–2026 academic year, according to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
St. Genevieve Parish was established in 1950 to serve the population surge that reshaped Panorama City and Arleta after World War II, with the high school opening in 1959 under the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, per the school's own historical account on St. Genevieve High School's website. The high school has since graduated more than 8,000 alumni. In October 2003, it became the first Catholic school in the United States and the first high school in California to be named a National School of Character by the Washington, D.C.-based Character Education Partnership.
A Presidential Connection Behind the New Theater
The new performing arts center carries an unusual historical thread: former President Jimmy Carter and his late wife Rosalynn built a relationship with St. Genevieve Parish Schools starting in 2005, helping raise funds for the facility, according to LAist. The outer courtyard is named in the Carters' honor and includes a dedicated monarch butterfly garden. LAist reported that the Carters made repeated visits to the school and hosted student delegations in Georgia over nearly two decades.
St. Genevieve unified its elementary and high school leadership under a single administrative model in July 2013, a restructuring that set the operational foundation for the master-planning efforts culminating in the West Campus expansion, according to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles school handbook.
Rivas Brings a STEM Background to the Visit
Rivas was elected in November 2024 to represent California's 29th Congressional District, taking office in January 2025 as the first Latina to represent the San Fernando Valley district and the only Latina in Congress with a STEM background, according to Toluca Lake Magazine. She holds an electrical engineering degree from MIT and a master's degree in education from Harvard. Before Congress, Rivas served six years in the California State Assembly and grew up in nearby Pacoima.
In 2012, Rivas founded DIY Girls, a San Fernando Valley nonprofit promoting STEM education among young women, according to DIY Girls. That background in educational equity gives added context to her tour of a campus investing heavily in new instructional and classroom space.
A Major Investment in a Working-Class Neighborhood
The scale of the $29 million investment stands out against the surrounding community. Panorama City is among the most densely populated neighborhoods in Los Angeles, where an estimated 46.7% to 49.4% of residents were foreign-born as of 2024, according to Data USA. The median household income in the surrounding 91402 ZIP code was estimated at $57,369 in 2024, below the Los Angeles County average, per ZIP Code Info.
For a campus rooted in the neighborhood's post-World War II growth, the new theater, chapel, and classrooms mark one of the most significant physical investments in St. Genevieve's history. With the new school year now underway, the completed West Campus gives the Panorama City community a modernized hub intended to serve generations of students to come.
