FYI: SLO’s Performing Arts Center once was voted "Worst-Looking Building" in a New Times reader poll. The next year, readers had a change of heart and the PAC came in second place for "Best-Looking Building."

Are local performing arts centers meeting local groups’ needs?

BY GLEN STARKEY

For Central Coast arts lovers, it may seem as if performing arts centers have been sprouting up like a spring bloom. Since the PAC at Cal Poly opened in 1996, Arroyo Grande’s Clark Center has opened, an under-construction North County PAC is nearly completed in Templeton, and now Santa Maria is even talking about a PAC for its community.

These snazzy venues have been heralded as important new performance spots for local groups. But many homegrown artists are finding that the PACs of SLO County are not as accessible as they had hoped.

How much responsibility do PACs bear in availing themselves to local productions and performances?

Are expectations for affordable, ready access to these venues by local performers unrealistic?

Is anything being done to make these venues more affordable?

As far as Diane Schallen is concerned, the newly opened Clark Center has hit a sour note. Schallen’s daughter is a local dancer whose troupe practices and performs in Arroyo Grande. Another dancer in the troupe who lost a leg to cancer (she dances on a prosthesis) was recently diagnosed with lung cancer. Schallen thought the Clark Center would be a great place to hold a benefit concert, allowing these young dancers a chance to perform in a world-class venue while raising money for a courageous young performer in need.

"My daughter’s dance studio is in the Village [of Arroyo Grande], but its theater only seats 60," said Schallen. "Their last show they had to perform four times over a weekend, with each performance taking four hours! The Clark Center is sitting right there, and these kids should be able to use it."

According to Schallen, when she approached the Clark Center for its larger, more desirable setting and seating capacity, she was told "there were no freebies for anyone," and she’d need "$1,000 to get through the door."

"It’s so disappointing," said Schallen. "Here’s this girl with cancer who dances with a prosthesis, and now she has lung cancer. The Clark Center was built on donations. It should be used for something like this. I don’t think people have any idea what’s really going on at the center. It should be part of the community."

Schallen’s perception of the role of a local performing arts center is shared by many in the community. But her view, according to Curtis Reinhardt, former Clark Center Association executive director, is a misconception that doesn’t take into account the reality of running a venue like the Clark.

"The electric company doesn’t give us electricity," said Reinhardt, who helped inaugurate the center’s opening season. "The light bulbs aren’t free. The janitor and toilet paper are not free. At some point in time, it was the vision of Cliff Clark that we would be able to further fund the events of local performing arts groups.

"But at this point, given that the facility is head-and-tails above what a community like Arroyo Grande normally has, and that it is not a money maker, there’s not a lot" the center can do right now. It needs to cover direct costs. The center is raising an endowment that will help local groups in the future.

"The way I look at it," Reinhardt said, "local performance groups are getting a good deal now. A lot of the costs are already underwritten." That’s not to say the center couldn’t offer a better deal at some time in the future, he added.

The reality of running a PAC is far more complicated than what many local performance groups may imagine. Setting up a box office alone is a major endeavor. Then there’s creating a ticket system and money-gathering apparatus, staffing, and organizing it.

But all that aside, is the Clark Center doing enough to help local groups?

"Of course not," said Reinhardt. "But we’re in our infancy. It takes time to get it all set up." The center hasn’t done nearly as much as planned, he added, which is to make the facility as accessible and easy to use as possible for local arts groups.

The Clark Center’s single performance cost is $1,125, which doesn’t include tech support or rental of the lighting system. But a nonprofit rate of $595 is available. Even with the rate cut in half, that still strikes many local performance groups as a big chunk of change.

While there are plans to do more for local groups, said Reinhardt, what the center offers now "is a good value." As executive director, he tried working with people as much as he could, even bending "over backwards; twisting our rate card to accommodate some of these fledgling organizations." But as with any business, the center must balance its costs.

To help local groups, added Reinhardt, the center offers "an alternative, minimum nonprofit rate that’s good for Monday through Wednesday." The discounted rate is further halved to $300. "You have to schedule two months before the date, and if you do well at the box office, you have to pay some of the difference back. You can’t go many places and get a pristine state-of-the-art theater for $300. The bottom line is, we need the community to work with us and be supportive," finished Reinhardt.

It’s also important to remember that the Clark Center is actually under the aegis of the Lucia Mar School District, which is ultimately in charge of creating the rate schedule. According to Clark Center Theater Manager Barry Hamlin, at $595 for a performance, $100 for "full-blown" automated lights, and $21-an-hour tech personnel, the Clark Center is inexpensive.

"Shop around," said Hamlin. "You’ll find we have one of lowest fees. There are inherent costs of operating the building, and the school district sets those numbers. They came up with $595 after consulting with their accountants. The main hall seats up to 644 people, but we have a smaller theater that seats 225 and rents for as little as $150. Not all groups have a need for the main theater. The Pacific Light Opera Theater, which has been around for about 20 years, is going to use the small theater to mount their production of ‘Fiddler on the Roof.’ It’s a nice little space."

Hamlin is disappointed that people such as Schallen hold the misconception that the Clark Center isn’t accommodating local groups’ needs. He sees the Clark as "a great partnership between the foundation, the private sector, and the school district, which is the public sector. I think they’ve done a tremendous amount toward making the venue affordable. That’s not to say they’re giving it away, but the school district is certainly not making one dime off the building, which is a real asset to the community. As for Diane Schallen, I remember her call fairly well. I referred her to Curtis [Reinhardt], but she never called back. I really understand where she’s coming from, and I hope she can get a little support, but $600 to get in is pretty reasonable."

Like Schallen, Fred Balazs, who runs Music & Arts for Youth, is also disappointed in the lack of accommodation from local PACs.

"I know that people mean well, but [this lack of inexpensive access for local performing groups] is an indication that something is not right," said Balazs. "A group like Centerpoint Theater [which was evicted from its theater in the Greyhound bus station and couldn’t secure funding or another location, hence it moved to New Orleans]–those are the people for whom [local performing arts centers] should be."

Maestro Balazs, a composer and concert director, has brought to SLO County to perform for free many performers who command up to $10,000 per concert. He stages these events for children and would like to offer a program for the community at large, but feels the cost of securing a location such as the Christopher Cohan Center in the SLO PAC is too prohibitive.

"Here we have a great artist who comes to play free for the kids, but I can’t afford a venue for another concert," lamented Balazs. "Something is wrong with that. Why should a great artist who commands a $10,000 fee, who comes over here for nothing, why should we be put in a position that it costs thousands of dollars to finance a concert? It doesn’t make sense to me."

Balazs found working with the SLO PAC abnormally difficult: "It was slow, awkward-going, very time-consuming–unnecessarily slow. Finally the truth came out of what it was going to cost, and I couldn’t believe it!"

A single performance in the SLO PAC will cost $2,125 for commercial use, or $1,125 for nonprofit use. That doesn’t include tech costs, which can be considerable depending on the type of performance mounted. The Gilbert Reed Ballet spends about $15,000 for rental and tech at the SLO PAC on its annual "A Christmas Carol." To Balazs, these costs are absurd.

"I don’t want to be a griper, but it bothers me to see this," he said. "Groups are being excluded from these venues because of cost, the very people for which these venues were built. It’s become a tail that wags the dog."

Of course not every local performance group feels it’s getting fleeced. Many well-established groups such as the Gilbert Reed Ballet and the SLO Symphony feel that local PACs are doing a terrific job.

"We don’t use just one venue," said SLO Symphony Executive Director Sandi Sigurdson. "We feel like we get what we pay for. In point of fact, both the San Luis PAC and the Clark Center are subsidizing local groups, because these groups don’t pay all the costs to run these venues. I also know the Foundation for the Performing Arts Center is building an endowment for operations for the PAC, an endowment that’s specifically there to offer nonprofits a reduced rental rate."

Sigurdson understands how local groups can be surprised by the venues’ fees, especially the tech costs that can rise quickly, but "the technicians are wonderful."

"When we first started working with the [SLO] PAC, it took awhile to understand the costs," said Sigurdson. "At first I was saying, ‘You’re going to charge me for that?,’ and ‘Why can’t I have one technician instead of three?,’ and ‘Aren’t you just going to turn on the lights and open the doors?’ Of course there’s a lot more to it than that, and as local groups learn this, the reason behind the cost of renting a venue like the PAC will be clearer."

Barbara Halon, the executive director of the Gilbert Reed Ballet, has worked with both the SLO PAC and the Clark Center, and says both venues are "doing a good job."

It is expensive, however. Halon said her group’s tech fees alone at last years’ "A Christmas Carol" were $10,000.

"It would be great to have more of a discount, but for what we’re getting, to me, it seems reasonable," said Halon. "Of course, we don’t make any money. We don’t even cover expenses through ticket sales."

Private fundraising helps subsidize the cost of the ballet’s events, and while Halon says they could cut costs (such as not using the SLO Symphony for accompanying music, which costs the ballet $14,000), "We want to give public the absolute best-quality performance we can, and live music is part of that."

Not only are the venues absorbing some of the costs of tickets, but the performance organizations are absorbing costs as well. When you go to see "A Christmas Carol," which costs about $70,000 to mount, the ticket you buy doesn’t come anywhere near to paying all the costs of either the performance or the operation of the venue.

Ron Regier is the managing director of Christopher Cohan Center. He realizes that for many local groups, the perception is his venue is too expensive. Overall, however, he feels the PAC has been diligent in its attempts to accommodate all interested parties.

"It seems to me, in terms of the Cohan Center, given the number of organizations or different groups and entities that utilize the Center, that it’s been more successful than anyone envisioned," said Regier. "Something like 17 organizations use the center on an ongoing basis, multiple times every year, and other organizations use it once a year. Given what I know about other PACs, we’re a real success story. We would like to be all things to all people, and I think we try to be, but that’s a difficult proposition and it doesn’t always work out that way.

"I remember talking to Fred [Balazs] at a couple meetings. I remember some of the ideas he had. But we decided early on that the Cohan Center was not going to be a presenter of events. Now, the Clark Center has taken a different approach. They recently brought in the Georgian State Choir. As we looked at other PACs in western states, we found that those that tried to produce their own shows suffered financial losses. In some cases it became a real scandal."

In short, the SLO PAC is not in the business of producing or underwriting performances. The venue is a partnership among three groups: the State of California, which pays two-thirds of the costs; the City of San Luis Obispo; and the Foundation for the Performing Arts Center–both of which pay one-sixth of the costs.

Instead, the PAC is in the business of providing a world-class venue that can accommodate any type of production, large or small, technically complex or not.

"There’s a lot of overhead involved with maintaining the type of staff we need to maintain," said Regier. "We should be on top of it, ready and willing to handle anything that’s needed. So we have to have the right people always available. When a small community group comes in who doesn’t need all the expertise we can offer, they think we’re overstaffed. But this isn’t like L.A., where we can just hire an expert at the last minute. We have to keep someone on staff, and that increases our overhead."

Last year the PAC accommodated 21 school shows for children, with the kids paying just 50 cents a head. The PAC also has the smaller Harmon Hall, and Regier says the cost of renting that room just dropped to $400 a day for Monday through Wednesday. The PAC is trying to help local groups, he says, but "we have a responsibility for being stewards of the facility. Users sometimes want to know why they have to pay for three technicians when running a show, thinking they can run the light board themselves. But this is a sophisticated and expensive system, and there’s liability to worry about. The PAC is a dangerous place to work."

With the North County PAC about to open its doors in December, local groups may be wondering if it will be any better at accommodating local groups. According to Templeton Unified School District Superintendent Curtis Debost, there will be no subsidies for local groups.

"We’re in no position to provide any money to any group," said Debost. "In order to qualify for matching funds from state, we have to let any group associated with the Community Service District (Templeton isn’t an incorporated town) use it free of charge. Local groups who want to rent the facility will have to pay the going rate."

Fees for the new North County PAC are still being determined, but it appears this PAC will be in the same financially difficult situation the other PACs of SLO County have found themselves in. Local groups who dream of inexpensive, yet world-class performing facilities will need to keep dreaming. Æ

Glen Starkey will let local groups put on a show in his garage.