This also appeared as an op-ed in Sunday's Tribune.
The Missouri Theatre Center for the Arts is a public treasure. Tens of thousands of people came of age with knowledge of the theater during one of its many lives. Thousands have attended musical performances, plays, ballets, films and comedy shows both before and after the theater’s restoration. It is our theater, and we are proud of it.
For these reasons and because the theater received so much public attention in 2009, I thought it would be appropriate to share an update on the state of the Missouri Theatre Center for the Arts.
In short, the theater is solvent, open for business and booking aggressively for 2010 and beyond. We are no longer on life support. We are here to stay. This is not to say the theater is not a bit fragile. Recovery takes time. Still, if we stay the course of prudent and vigilant management and keep our focus on vibrant and diverse programming as we grow our audience, a full recovery is possible.
The challenges facing the Missouri Theatre Center for the Arts were well publicized during 2009. Massive debt, a mostly empty checking account and leadership changes made the news and painted a bleak picture of the theater’s future. Most reports were true and factual. By September, the theater had drained its resources and had less than a month’s worth of operating funds in the bank.
How, then, is it we are open? We implemented changes and a plan for a turnaround that married good management with the community’s good will, committed ourselves to efficiencies and transparent business practices and put into action a vision for more responsive programming that would generate a positive cultural and economic impact.
To make effective changes, one must know what to change. In the case of the Missouri Theatre Center for the Arts, we needed to understand what went wrong. This process actually began in 2008 with the help of outside business management and accounting consultants retained by the Missouri Symphony Society’s board of directors.
The most important of those changes was to implement a new rental policy based on the real costs of operating the theater. The theater was losing money every day it was open and giving away its space. Our new rental pricing might create a hardship for some not-for-profit partners, but we have implemented a discount policy for those groups.
The theater already was operating with a skeleton staff, and reducing staff was the last thing we wanted to do. Instead, we dropped unnecessary expenses, some small and some larger but all adding up to savings. We looked at everything from niceties such as water coolers, which we discontinued, to a passenger van, which we sold. The search for efficiencies is an ongoing institutional policy.
Our 2010 plans include the development of a community programming council to advise us on ramping up our programming with the goal of producing a more diverse calendar that will use the theater’s space efficiently while providing better cultural service to a wider audience. To set the stage for exciting programming, we met with our regular partners to shore up damaged or confused relationships and to schedule their future programming as a priority.
In addition to cutting and controlling costs, adjusting pricing and initiating new programming to increase revenues, we approached close friends with an opportunity to invest in our new vision. They responded quickly and generously by pledging about $250,000 to secure operations in the short term.
With fulfillment of outstanding pledges and commitments, we also reduced a $5.5 million construction debt to $2.7 million. Still a hefty number, this represents a decrease of more than 50 percent of our debt. We then worked with our consortium of banks to structure a plan that ensures a performing loan during 2010 while reducing principal further.
As a result of these actions, the Missouri Theatre Center for the Arts is alive and well as our community’s hub of cultural activity. This year, it will be the job of the staff, board and volunteers to keep the theater solvent and responsive to our community’s cultural needs. It is in the hands of the larger community to shape and preserve the future of its center for the arts as a key piece of our city’s dynamic future.
