James Dean's school renovated

FAIRMOUNT, Ind. -- The old high school stage where James Dean honed the acting skills that would make him a Hollywood icon could become a community theater, the company renovating the building said.\n"We'd like to restore that third floor and turn it into a community performing arts center," said Ray Willey, chief executive of Historic Properties Inc., which is handling the $1.6 million renovation of Fairmount High School.\nWork on restoring the crumbling, century-old school about 60 miles northeast of Indianapolis began this summer. The Ripon, Calif.-based company hopes to complete it in about a year, in time for celebrations planned in 2005 for the 50th anniversary of Dean's death.\nAs many as 30,000 people are expected to visit the town of less than 3,000 beginning Friday for the annual town's annual James Dean festival. An annual recreation of the movie star's funeral procession will be held Tuesday, the 48th anniversary of Dean's death in a car crash.\nThe California developer paid Historic Fairmount $1 for the building, which has been on the Historic Landmark Foundation's Most Endangered Sites list for the past three years. The red brick and limestone school closed in 1986 and has suffered serious water damage since then due to a leaky roof.\n"We have a crew covering the entire roof to keep out the wind and weather," Willey said.\nStairways to the second and third floors have collapsed, but Historic Fairmount President Judy Cowling said that has not kept tourists from breaking into the school where Dean graduated in 1949. She said she has found visitors' names scrawled on the school's chalkboards over the years.\n"The restoration means people won't have to break into the building anymore to walk through the halls James Dean walked through," Cowling said.\nHistoric Properties also hopes to restore classrooms to honor other notable Fairmount celebrities, such as Garfield cartoonist Jim Davis.\nWilley said the company normally works in larger communities, but it expects to raise much of the money for the project from supporters in Hollywood because of Dean's iconic status.\nSaving the third floor auditorium where Dean first performed in high school productions was a top priority, and developers hope to create a new home for the town's public library on the ground floor.\n"There are some things this town needs and hopefully the school will help with some of those things," Cowling said. "I think there's a lot of worth in preserving a building with so much community history. It gives a real sense of place to Fairmount"