Theatre Design & Technology - Dec 1969 - 6

PERFORMING ARTS CENTERS-WHO NEEDS THEM?
(Richard Weinstein)
a reciprocal contempt for the regional theatre whom they see peopled basically by
those who couldn't make it on Broadway.
The final consequence of this isolation,
which I think springs from patronage psychology, is the preposterous funding problems that all the major centers seem to
have in one form or another. When compared with most of the successful business
operations in this country, those funding
problems seem naive and foolish-and frequently seem to me to be unnecessary.

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A New Financial Approach
In my view, what is required is a much
more aggressive attitude on the part of those
that are really serious about the theatre or
about culture, an attitude which would refuse handouts from patrons who thereby
discharge their guilt towards some cultural
idol by endowing a chair in a building. The
building may cost as much as $45 million,
a substantial part of which could have been
saved by less opulent fitting out, and the
remainder of which could have been invested
in some kind of fund that might have produced scholarships year by year, or reduced
ticket costs, or gone to audience development.
In the New York City Planning Office, we
have thus far caused about $ 1 6 mill ion worth
of new theatres to be started-four of them.

There are about seven more now under discussion. Within the next year or so, we
may be involved with as much as $ 50 milI ion worth of new theatre construction in
New York. Some of these theatres will be
given to their owners at no rental cost.
Most of the operating cost of these theatres could be reduced,-were the contract
written properly, -by a factor of about one
third.

We have changed the zoning ordinance in
the city to permit developers to build additional space in office buildings if they will
include a theatre which meets the specifications of the City. The City in effect is a
trustee. The Board of Estimate approves an
arrangement by which the building can be
as much as 20% larger if it includes a theatre. So the capital cost of a theatre is entirely absorbed by private developers. The
monies that they might otherwise have had
to riase for capital investment in the theatre's physical plant can be invested directly
in scholarships or subsidies of productions,
and need not be sunk in one shot into a
capital expenditure. That money is generated through increased square footage from
which the developer can derive enough extra to build the capital investment in the
theatre.

There are a whole variety of sophisticated
ways that friends of mine on Wall Street
have suggested for increasing the funds
that would be available when released. There
are all kinds of advantages to non-profit institutions investing their money with respect
to capital gains, etc.; and these techniques
can be very productive of capital for operating the programs of these theatres.
Potential Value of Unused Air Rights
If there were an institutionalized arm of the
City Treasury that could accept title to the
deeds of the theatres that we're building
(and relieve the developers of the tax obligations that they would have to pay by accepting the title to the theatres), and if this
agency then franchised to commercial developers the right to operate these theatres
using the money invested, it is estimated
that an endowment of $15 to $2 0 million
a year for the theatre in New York could be
developed within about five or six years,
seven or eight times the current annual investment of the National Endowment for the
Arts.
"Conservative" development of the air rights
over Lincoln Center-over the buildings only
and not the open spaces-could create an
annual income of $6 million per year. Or if
the air rights were sold outright, they would
be worth, today, about $65 million-which
might then be invested.

A GEORGE IZENOUR PORTFOLIO, , ,
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Madison Performing Arts Hall

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THEATER DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

DECEMBER,1969

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