FAYETTEVILLE : Study: Keep Walton, add 2nd arts complex
Posted on Wednesday, October 29, 2008
FAYETTEVILLE — The Walton Arts Center needs to build a new facility, possibly in Fayetteville or Bentonville, to continue to grow and to remain the region’s leading arts presenter, a consultant’s study released Tuesday shows.
Two consultants with the Los Angeles-based Arts Consulting Group presented the findings to the Walton Arts Center board of trustees Tuesday afternoon. The firm’s 18-month study was designed to determine the needs of the 16-year-old arts center in downtown Fayetteville.
As the region has grown, so has the center’s attendance, with the main hall at 95 percent capacity, said Herbert Chesbrough, senior consultant. It’s the biggest cultural center in the state, and just finished its best-ever fiscal year.
“You’re now presenting really the entire spectrum of the performing arts,” Chesbrough said.
Chesbrough said if the arts center doesn’t build a new facility, “somebody else may.”
While still using the Dickson Street location, the consultants recommended building an additional 190, 600-square-foot facility in the region. It would feature a 2, 200-seat theater with proscenium seating; a 600-seat theater club, which could be used for performances and meeting space; and a 75- to 100-seat black box theater for festivals and children’s programming.
The three theaters would share common areas — lobby, concessions and gift shop — as well as a loading dock, dressing rooms, technical space and offices.
The proposed main auditorium would accommodate larger touring productions that can’t fit in the arts center’s principal Baum Walker Hall. It also would be more appealing to promoters of big-name acts, said Willem Brans, vice president of Arts Consulting Group. The Fayetteville building then would be more available to arts groups from the University of Arkansas and the community. The new center also could serve as a corporate meeting space.
At the current site, Baum Walker seats 1, 201 and the blackbox Starr Theater up to 220, along with other rooms for performances, receptions and classes.
The consultant staff looked at 40 sites and narrowed the recommendation down to two cities — Bentonville or Fayetteville — for their “synergy.” Fayetteville already has UA and the downtown / Dickson Street entertainment area. In Bentonville, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is under construction, and children’s and science museums are being planned.
The consultants also talked confidentially with potential donors to determine if financial support exists, Brans said. Most of those donors agreed raising the $ 180 million was possible but that it would take eight- and nine-figure donations, with a lead gift of $ 100 million.
The willingness of potential donors to contribute was contingent on the chosen location of the new facility, Brans said. He added that a regional consensus was critical to a successful capital campaign.
They also recommended creating a regional committee to start planning a new performing arts facility, with a timeline that includes three years of planning before a campaign is launched.
Fayetteville Mayor Dan Coody expressed concern for a proposed parking deck that would be near the Walton Arts Center. But he said he understood that such a deck would be a narrower focus than a new arts facility, which will be a long-term, regional plan.
“We need the arts center expansion, and it needs to be a regional approach,” he said.
Coody particularly liked the consultants’ “bookend” idea, with Crystal Bridges to the north and the performing arts facilities to the south. “Whatever works best to make this project work, we’re going to be completely behind,” he said.
Ed Clifford, president and chief executive officer of the Bentonville / Bella Vista Chamber of Commerce, said the consultants ’ recommendation “was specific, and it had a sense of urgency.”
A regional approach is best, he said, because everyone has to be comfortable with the site and a consensus is the only way to raise $ 180 million.
He pointed to the 10-year-old Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport and a regional wastewater treatment plant under construction in south Benton County as examples projects that happened because regional leaders came together.
“Now, will emotions get in the way ? Yeah,” he said.
The possible Northeast J Street site in Bentonville would be more easily navigated by tractor-trailers used by touring productions than downtown Bentonville or Fayetteville, Clifford said. A planned Interstate-540 exit at J Street would facilitate that.
Bob Workman, Crystal Bridges executive director, said he’s confident the arts center’s leadership will pick the right spot for expansion.
“Regardless of location, I know that [the arts center ] and Crystal Bridges will regularly collaborate and build on the dynamic energies of each other,” he said.
Terri Trotter, the arts center’s interim president and chief executive officer, said the projections of 195, 000 in combined attendance in the fifth year of the new facility’s operation is twice the current center’s attendance.
“The scope of this project is huge,” she said, “with the potential to be transformational for Northwest Arkansas in the performing arts, which I think is pretty exciting.
“ We really have to be looking forward and saying, ‘ OK, what does Northwest Arkansas want to be in the performing arts when we grow up ?’” Information for the article was contributed by Amanda O’Toole of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
