This story originally appeared in the October 2025 issue of Town&Gown magazine.
Rick Jacobs was taking a walk in Bellefonte’s Talleyrand Park during the COVID lockdown of 2020 when he bumped into an old buddy, then-mayor Tom Wilson.
“He stopped me and said, ‘I need your help.’ He is a musician and he loves live music. … So, he said, ‘I have a friend [Tom Bathgate], I don’t think you know him. I’d like the two of you to chair a committee to build a stage in the park.’
“And I said, ‘Finally!’
“He said, ‘What do you mean?’
“I said, ‘The gazebo is wonderful. It’s beautiful. My friend designed it, but it’s not a place for music.’ The people who perform there have one common saying: The music goes everywhere but where you want it to go.”
Five years later — after overcoming some stumbling blocks along the way — the vision Jacobs and Wilson discussed at their chance meeting in the park that day is on the cusp of becoming reality.
Project leaders are poised to start the process toward breaking ground on The Stage at Talleyrand over the next few months, with the goal of hosting the first concert in late summer or early fall of 2026, Jacobs says.
The stage, planned for the park annex behind the borough-owned building that houses Pelican’s SnoBalls, is designed with an ear toward acoustics; it will be approximately 40 feet by 50 feet, tapering in width as it moves front to back.
“One of the defining characteristics [is that] the Nittany Valley Symphony, if they want to do a concert, can put the symphony on the stage,” Jacobs says. “We focused on concerts because that’s what goes on here the most. But we want to be able to have dance recitals, plays, whatever anybody wants to put on, this will be the place to do it if you want an outdoor venue. When you think about it, it’s one of the few that will be in Centre County.”
While initial drawings for the project included a welcome/reception area at the site of the building that houses Pelican’s, that is no longer part of the plan. But Jacobs says the committee wants to be ready to work with the borough and the water authority if there is interest in developing that site down the road.
The estimated construction cost is $1.3 million. The fundraising effort received a huge boost in 2023 when the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development awarded a $1 million grant. That grant expires at the end of this year, so there is urgency to show progress. An extension will be sought if necessary, Jacobs says.
“Whether we break ground in November, December, or January, the goal is to have a concert here sometime next summer, at the latest early fall of next year,” Jacobs says. “That’s our bottom line. We have a couple of donors who would like to see that happen, and we’d like to see it happen. We’re close to our target for the cost of the building and we have some very active prospects to get a $200,000 fund [for maintenance and operations] in place.”
A plan to break ground in late 2024 was derailed when the water authority considered drilling wells on the land to access the Big Spring’s aquifer, a move that could have led to removal of the spring’s unappealing blue cover. That idea was eventually scrapped, and the Friends of Talleyrand and the borough council worked out an agreement to move ahead with the stage project.
As of early September, the committee was set to begin the final permitting process and the project was “on target,” according to Jacobs.
“The borough council has a real spirit of cooperation and so do we,” says Jacobs. “I think we’re on a roll.”
Here is more from our conversation:
This stage is needed because, acoustically, the gazebo just doesn’t work?
Jacobs: Yes, and it is too small. It doesn’t hold a whole lot of people. When we have a slightly bigger band of 10 people, they play in front of the gazebo rather than trying to get up there. This solves that problem. It’s in Bellefonte, but we think it’s going to be great for Centre County. Maybe the Nittany Valley Symphony will develop a regular summer practice session out here. Tom [Wilson] has the idea of having a battle of the community bands, where all the local bands come out here and play. That would be great fun.
Would there potentially be bigger-name performers here as well?
Jacobs: We’d like to. That’s one of the constant questions we get. What if Britney Spears comes here? What if Taylor Swift comes here? Well, they’re not going to, not to mention the traffic issues it would create. Parking has been brought up as an issue. But right now, people park all over when they attend events in the park. I believe we had about 2,000 people for the Easter egg hunt and somehow people managed to park and enjoy the day. I live by the elementary school on Linn Street. I walk here all the time. It’s not a very far walk from that side of the park, where there’s more parking, to right here (near the site of the stage). Depending on the time of day, there’s lots of parking back here; the [American] Philatelic Society has a lot of parking behind it. Hopefully we can cut a deal with them to use the lot.
One of the defining factors for us is Water Street does not offer easy access to the park. We would have had to spend another two years dealing with PennDOT if we wanted to change anything on the entrance and exit from that small parking area at the park annex, so we left that alone. … What we will do is the day of any kind of event, we can put in place traffic control to use the small parking lot as a drop-off zone for those needing closer access.
(Jacobs also notes that plans for a waterfront hotel/condominium/commercial project nearby include a parking garage that could help address the issue if that development comes to fruition.)
The Friends of Talleyrand committee is organizing this; once it’s up and running, do you want to hire a manager?
Jacobs: It depends on what kind of funding we wind up with and prospects for continued funding. It would be a part-time job for sure. We have a couple people interested; we would like to do that. We, the Friends of Talleyrand, plan to stay involved. … We will raise enough funds — and we’re there right now — to build the building. We’ve told the borough that we’d put 15 % of the costs — about $200,000 — in a fund that will pay for the maintenance and operations of the stage. And we’ll keep that level of funding in that fund. Hopefully, we’ll be able to hire somebody part-time to book acts and work with the borough, because the borough owns the property and we view this as a gift to the borough that we will raise money for and we will support through our fundraising.
You’ve got the million dollars from DCED in place and you said you need about $1.3 million. Do you have other pledges at this point?
Jacobs: We have other cash from generous donors. We’ve been paying our architect [Michael Leakey of Hoffman Leakey Architects LLC in Bellefonte] for all of his team’s great work, as well as other people who have provided services along the way. We just hired a marketing firm, a very small contract, to help us organize mailings and our efforts to talk to people. We have a committee of 10 people that is actively working on this. All of us are pretty well connected and we’ve made queries into big-time donors. And they’ve said when you get closer, talk to me. And that’s what we’ve been waiting for. … There are a lot of people in Bellefonte who have deep pockets and love the town. And we know a lot of those people or we’re one phone call away from someone who’s close to those people.
And this won’t cost taxpayers anything?
Jacobs: No. We’ve always told the borough, since the very first day, we would pay for the building, there would be no loans on the building, and we will set up this additional fund. That’s never changed. What’s changed is we always thought about a 15% fund and when [the project cost, including a welcome center] was $2.5 million, that fund was much bigger; now that it’s about $1.3 million, we can do fine with $200,000. If we invest it conservatively, we’ll still make a decent amount of money every year while actively soliciting more contributions.
What do you think the economic impact will be?
Jacobs: It’d be guesswork right now. The Happy Valley Adventure Bureau — Fritz [Smith, president and CEO] — was just great about this. They donated $10,000 toward the stage while we were still working out the details. Fritz asked all those questions and he said, “But of course you can’t answer these yet.” But it won’t be far, when you think about it. We just had the craft fair in town and that brings people in and everybody gets ready for it. They start drawing on the sidewalks, the restaurants are open, they have lots of tables full. So, the stage will have a very positive impact.
You mentioned starting on this in 2020 and you’ve had your share of delays since then. What’s kept you going through this?
Jacobs: The people on the committee are fun people to get together with. Many of us are retired and it’s just great to go out to have a drink and talk to people about what’s going on in our wonderful town. All of us see this vision. I moved here in 1979. I took a job at the university [Jacobs is now an emeritus professor of psychology at Penn State]; I bought a big old house in Bellefonte and I’ve been here ever since. And when I came here in ’79, everybody told me that Bellefonte was on the verge of really taking off. Well, 46 years later I still want it to take off and I think that’s how everybody feels.
There’s an energy here, there are nice stores and restaurants and it is a great place to walk and see beautiful architecture. People come from State College to eat at the [Gamble] Mill or State Burger or the Governor’s Pub or the Bellefonte Wok or Bonfatto’s, and there are others. There’s lots to do here and I’d like there to be more. We would like the stage to be yet another fine attraction. I think everybody on the committee feels that way.
When that first event happens, what do you think you’ll be feeling?
Jacobs: Relief. Joy. It’ll be great. What I’m going to do is walk around and look at the smiles on the faces of the people who said it would never happen or “we don’t want this.” There weren’t very many. Early on, we met with about 100 people from all the different organizations, Kiwanis, Lions Club, we met with the business owners, we met with borough council, we met with the water authority. And most people thought it was a good idea. At least that’s what they told us. It turns out that maybe a few of them didn’t think of it positively, but they didn’t speak up at the time. So, we felt like we were on the right track and I don’t think it’s changed that much.
We have heard, “Why do we need it? We’ve got the gazebo.” The simple answer is you’re not a musician; you’d understand if you were. T&G
For more information about the stage, visit stageattalleyrand.org.
Mark Brackenbury is a former editor of Town&Gown.
