innov8ion wrote:And if the Fox cares about the cost of local shows, it can collaborate with the Kiel.
P-D, 1981 wrote:
If the city of St. Louis provides financial help for the Fox Theater, it could drive the city-owned Kiel Auditorium out of business, Lewis O. Collins, Kiel's manager charged today. Testifying before the aldermanic Ways and Means Committee, Collins said he has been told that the city plans to allocate federal community development funds for the renovation of the Fox, on North Grand Boulevard near Olive Street. Collins also asserted that the Pantheon Corp., which has bought the theater, would be excused from some city amusement taxes.
Kiel would have to go out of business because the Fox would become more attractive to theatrical producers, Collins said. The 4,5-seat Fox would have nearly 1,000 more seats than Kiel and could offer producers lower rates, he said.
The city Board of Estimate and Apportionment last month said that Kiel must become self-supporting. Collins told the aldermen that he must be able to keep the number of shows at Kiel at last year's level 165 in the Opera House and 75 in the Convention Hall.
Kiel is raising its rates as part of a program to help support itself, he said. Attracting producers will be difficult enough without competition from the Fox, he said.
Developer Leon Strauss took title Monday to the landmark Fox Theater, ending a complicated, eight-month sale transaction. In addition to buying the 52-year-old theater, Strauss' Pantheon Corp. also acquired the Humboldt Building to the north and several parking lots in the area from Fox St. Louis Properties Inc. Strauss hopes to reopen at least part of the Fox Theater by the fall.
Collins said reports that the city would allocate federal funds to help the Fox were confirmed to him by John Temporiti, chief of staff for Mayor Vincent C. Schoemehl Jr., and Frank Hamsher, director of the Community Development Agency.
Aldermen Steven C. Roberts, D-20th Ward, and Mike Jones, D-21st Ward, were critical of plans to aid the Fox. Does that mean that this year's budget for Kiel is a holding action until the Fox can be opened? Jones asked Collins.
Yes, sir, Collins replied.
If the Fox does not pay the amusement tax, the city would be helping to establish a facility that would produce no additional revenue for the city, Roberts said.
If all goes as planned — and the approval process seems to be well-greased — the Kiel Opera House will reopen in November 2010 with a production of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
There’s some irony in that, given that some supporters of the Fox Theatre and other entertainment venues around town see the Kiel as a Grinch that might steal their audience.
We’ve wondered about that ourselves, not so much because of concern about the Fox, but about the Grand Center district where the theater is located. The restoration of the “Fabulous Fox” in the early 1980s gave Midtown a second entertainment destination (along with Powell Hall) and helped spark the effort to turn Grand Boulevard between Lindell Boulevard and Washington Avenue into an arts, culture and entertainment district.
That effort has resulted in the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, new facilities for KETC-TV (Channel 9), the Grandel Theatre, the Sheldon, the Kranzberg Arts Center and several smaller institutions and the anticipated arrival of public radio station KWMU’s studios. It helped bolster the remarkable remaking of the St. Louis University campus. And while Grand Center is not yet everything its planners hoped it would be, it is well on its way.
As great as it would be to see the Kiel reopened after 18 years, we wondered if wounding the Fox would undermine two decades of public and private investment in Grand Center. Inasmuch as the public is being asked to give up $58 million in tax dollars for the $74 million rehab of the Kiel, does it make sense to use public dollars to undermine other public and private investments?
So we made a few phone calls to city officials, folks connected with institutions in Grand Center and people who know the entertainment business in St. Louis. The consensus: The Fox will lose business when the Kiel reopens, but not so much that it can’t survive.
But the Fox must work more closely as a partner in Grand Center, and the city must become more engaged in supporting that work. If that can happen, the entire arts and cultural scene in St. Louis can be enriched by a revitalized Kiel Opera House.
There now seems little doubt that the Kiel deal is going to happen. Last week, the Urban Planning and Zoning Committee of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen approved the deal on a 13-1 vote. The full board will get the bill in June.
St. Louis Blues’ managing partner David W. Checketts and his partners will put $16 million into the project.
The city will issue bonds and give up $1.5 million a year in ticket taxes on Blues hockey games to help back them. Federal and state tax credits will finance the rest.
Mr. Checketts’ group hopes to book events in the Opera House’s 3,200-seat main theater on 92 dates in the first year, rising to 110 by year 10. The partners also expect to book 66 events in the opera house’s 700-seat side theaters the first year, growing to 93 by the end of a decade.
The Fox’s backers worry that among those events will be some of the touring Broadway shows that are the Fox’s bread and butter. No more than six such shows come to town in most years. A competing venue inevitably will lead to bidding wars between the two promoters.
The Kiel group counters that self-produced shows and high-end concerts will be Opera House mainstays.
Besides, they say, the Fox has offers 1,000 more seats than the Kiel — a huge advantage in that more seats mean more revenue.
That may be so. But the Kiel and the Fox will compete for a lot of business, and the Fox will lose some of it.
The Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Earth City could lose some summer concerts to the Kiel.
Competition is inevitable, but it also creates opportunity. Venue operators have to adjust and get more creative in their booking. The entertainment audience today is far more segmented than it was 20 years ago. The result has been a greater variety of venues and entertainment opportunities.
There’s the St. Charles Family Arena, St. Louis University’s new Chaifetz Arena, the Touhill Performing Arts Center at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, the Pageant in the Delmar Loop, the Roberts Brothers’ Orpheum Theater, the Loretto Hilton Theatre, shows at casinos and numerous small stages that didn’t exist when the Kiel went dark in 1991.
Some of the shows compete for audience. Others are complementary. Bookers have to be smart and know their audiences.
The Fox can adapt to the challenge posed by the Kiel Opera House by hitching its star, as never before, to the rise of Grand Center — to the advantage of both, and to all of St. Louis.
The Fox and its grand marquee stand at the center of the arts district. But even some of its admirers say that sometimes the theater has stood apart from the rest of Grand Center and its ambitions. For all its artistic and theatrical successes over more than 25 years, the Fox has not been a catalyst for economic development in Grand Center and it hasn’t sustained so much as a neighboring restaurant.
Fox Associates President Richard Baker responds to this claim tersely. The Fox has had “very little input on Grand Center governance,” he said.
Here’s hoping that changes and that the Fox and Grand Center see the Kiel Opera House’s emergence as an chance to re-engage their considerable creative and commercial talents more aggressively and cooperatively.
Mayor Francis Slay and other city officials can help. In their excitement over what Kiel might mean to downtown, they should remember what Grand Center means to Midtown.
The district could benefit from coordinated parking plans, the development of a hotel and a more prominent role for St. Louis University. The city could be helpful in all those efforts.
Arts and entertainment doesn’t necessarily have to be a zero-sum game.
I just received word - Kiel Opera House vote: 25 - 1 at B of A to bring back the long-shuttered gem. #fgs
Grover wrote:Great point - can you imagine if cities subsidized new museums and performance halls to the tune of $500M+? I have to believe that type of investment would have a better return for a city than an NFL franchise.
migueltejada wrote:Grover wrote:Great point - can you imagine if cities subsidized new museums and performance halls to the tune of $500M+? I have to believe that type of investment would have a better return for a city than an NFL franchise.
3 million people don't go to the symphony, theatre performances, or opera in a year combined (well probably not anyways). You get that kind of turnout in one Cardinals season - not including blues and rams tickets. That's why sports get subsidized. Not saying it's right, but you can't argue with sports' popularity.
But, Gelfand said, SCP will be floating the bonds “sooner rather than later” and still plans to start construction in August or early September, which would put the Opera House on track to open in time for the holiday season in 2010.
