 |
Jymi Bolden
|
Cincinnati Arts Association President Steven Loftin
says that, after five years, The Aronoff Center has
proven "vital and successful."
|
The building looks like any handful of rundown warehouses that call University Heights home. But the Stage First Cincinnati sign hints at the structure's true purpose -- well, that and the sounds of laughter trickling onto the West McMicken sidewalk. It was Stage First Cincinnati Director Nicholas Korn who refashioned this warehouse into a threadbare actor's studio. A couple of worn sofas serve as a lounge. A dusty fridge offers refreshments.
On a March weeknight, Korn rehearses Bill Hartnett and the rest of the Stage First cast for a slapstick rendition of Aristophanes' The Clouds. The practice is loose and comical. Each actor reads his lines in the voice of a cartoon character. It's Korn's carefree way for helping his cast members feel comfortable with their dialogue.
In nine days, they'll leave West McMicken and perform The Clouds in front of a paying audience at the Aronoff Center for the Arts downtown. Korn is proud of the fact that Stage First has produced more plays at the Aronoff Center than any other local company.
It takes a substantial financial commitment for Stage First to call the Aronoff its permanent home. To rent the Fifth Third Bank Theater they'll spend $6,000 just for The Clouds. So it's important to Korn that every Stage First performance has a positive impact on audiences.
"I think the Aronoff Center has played a key role in the growth of Stage First," Korn says, speaking later at an Over-the-Rhine coffeehouse. "I always knew that we'd perform at the Fifth Third (Bank Theater). I felt it was important for our audience that we be downtown."
Korn is convinced that Stage First can't afford to stop calling the Aronoff home. The boost in profile provided by performing regularly at Cincinnati's high-profile arts center, he says, makes the high rents worthwhile. But many people say the city of Cincinnati isn't realizing all of its expectations from the $82 million facility. After five-and-a-half years, the hope is that the Aronoff Center will eventually achieve its full potential as downtown's civic gathering place.
In 1995, many American cities were revitalizing their downtowns through cultural tourism, and Cincinnati was looking to do the same with its new Aronoff Center. Years later, however, the downtown blocks surrounding the center haven't developed all that quickly.
Nicholson's Tavern and Pub and Pizzeria Uno remain the sole new developments outside the Aronoff Center's front door. At the corner of Seventh and Walnut streets, Jeff Ruby's moved into the space that used to house Ciao Baby. Around the corner, in front of the Fifth Third Bank Theater's Main Street lobby, a relocated sandwich shop is the only sign of new life.
In the eyes of many downtown pundits, the Aronoff Center is an isolated arts hall in need of adjacent cinemas, apartments and other signs of excitement. What's especially aggravating for many people is that this arts recipe for urban renewal has been successful elsewhere.
It's happened in Newark with its $180 million New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC). It's happened in Cleveland with the renovated theaters that comprise Playhouse Square. It's happened in Fort Worth, Texas, with its Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Performance Hall. There have also been success stories with Pittsburgh's Cultural District and Philadelphia's Avenue of the Arts.
In downtown Cincinnati, the bull market days are long over, and there's not one major addition to the core skyline to show for it other than a new Lazarus store.
In the wake of the recent riots, local leaders hope street life and community activity will continue to grow downtown. It's always been expected that the Aronoff Center would play a prominent role in a downtown revival, but it hasn't happened yet.
The easy part is dreaming of a better future. The tougher task is deciding what has to change at the Aronoff in order to make that future happen.
What should an arts center do?
Some people point to the quality of an arts center's programming as the key to its success. Others emphasize the ties a center builds between itself and local arts organizations and artists. There are those who say it's strictly a matter of operating at a profit.
Steven Loftin has been with Cincinnati Arts Association (CAA) -- manager of the Aronoff Center, as well as Music and Memorial halls in Over-the-Rhine -- since before the Aronoff first opened, going back almost seven years. Loftin first served as CAA's vice president and general manager under then-President Elissa Getto. After Getto left CAA on March 24, 2000, Loftin stepped in as acting president and executive director. A search by the CAA board resulted in Loftin officially replacing Getto, in addition to continuing his programming duties.
Loftin, like his predecessor, is quick to emphasize CAA's firm financial footing.
"The Aronoff Center has been opened five years, and the CAA has also been in joint operations of those three facilities, and the news is good," he says, speaking at his Aronoff Center office. "We showed a $172,000 surplus for the recent fiscal year. We have completed five years, and five years is an appropriate scale of time to take a look at what we've done. It was important to substantiate our position that the Aronoff Center was vital and successful. We believe the numbers would show that, and in fact they did.
"We had no reservations about whether somebody might think they should be better or somebody might be surprised they were that good. Either way, there they are."
Its financial ledger aside, the Aronoff Center continues to search for the right mix of programming, community outreach and budgetary constraints. The 2,700-seat Procter & Gamble Hall is used principally for Broadway touring productions. The 440-seat Jarson-Kaplan Theater is home for Contemporary Dance Theater shows, and Fifth Third Bank Theater is a black-box space with a maximum seating of 150.
Initial supporters imagined the Aronoff to be a place where area arts groups would meet and perform on a regular basis. But after-school classes in music, dance or art are nowhere to be found. There aren't even any dedicated classrooms.
While Newark's NJPAC dedicated $2.5 million of its first-year operating budget of $20 million to arts education, CAA's own arts education budget stands at $256,315 from an operating budget of $8,213,324.
CAA's recent Annual Report and December 2000 economic impact study ballyhoo plenty of statistics: 2.4 million people have attended Aronoff performances since its 1995 opening, and during its first five years of operation the center is estimated to have created $171.2 million in business sales.
But local artists and arts patrons continue to question what the Aronoff Center does to serve the overall community and introduce itself to new audiences. When compared to other downtown arts centers, it's clear there's so much more that the Aronoff can do.
The Fifth Third Bank Theater is the permanent home for Stage First Cincinnati. It's been their performance base since day one.
On a warm morning in late March, Korn and his crew of actors start unloading the set for The Clouds into the theater. Stage First is a small company, so they rely on each other to do all the grunt work.
 |
Jymi Bolden
|
Construction of the main theater, Procter & Gamble
Hall
|
Setup is a back-breaking task that will keep Korn and his crew busy for the rest of the day. There is little time to rest before nightfall: A dress rehearsal in front of Aronoff Center volunteers is scheduled for the following evening. By then, Korn hopes to have the show completely polished. One day later, they'll be performing in front of an opening-night crowd.
The Fifth Third is a black-box theater space tucked on the backside of the Aronoff. Its dedicated entrance faces Main Street. Inside, there's a flat floor and no stage. Last year, Stage First built portable risers for better seating and eventually donated them to the Aronoff Center.
The Fifth Third space is intentionally informal. Stage First wouldn't have it any other way.
Things change, even with arts centers
The Aronoff Center was built primarily to replace the Taft Theatre as the home for touring Broadway Series shows, and initially times were good. Productions of Miss Saigon, Sunset Boulevard and Damn Yankees attracted sizable audiences. The Aronoff rose on the popularity of traveling Broadway shows, and 514,000 people came through its doors during the inaugural season.
But the boom times have dwindled, and CAA and the Aronoff never were able to fully capitalize on the gold rush of these popular Broadway shows. Most of the money went to the local presenter, the Louisville-based Broadway Series, which is in turn owned by SFX Entertainment, a conglomerate that presents concerts and shows all over the United States.
While the Denver Center in Colorado, the Providence Performing Arts Center in Rhode Island, the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center in Florida and The Ordway in Minneapolis do their own road-show presenting, that's not the arrangement between the Aronoff Center and the Broadway Series. Basically, the profits from Broadway tours go to SFX's bottom line -- the Aronoff simply collects rent each time a show comes to town.
The speculation is that if the Aronoff Center were to keep profits as a presenter of Broadway touring shows, rent rates for local arts groups to perform at the Fifth Third or Jarson-Kaplan theaters could be better subsidized. Money earned from such shows could underwrite an adventurous presenting series that might include avant-garde performance from the Wooster Group or serious theater like Tony Kushner's Angels in America.
It's telling that the Pulitzer Prize-winning Angels never made it to an Aronoff stage. The popular and controversial show did make it to the Denver Center, the organization that oversees the Denver Theater Company and the Denver Center Attractions, its own Broadway presenting company. (It also made stops in Columbus and Louisville, booked by the Broadway Series, which apparently was unwilling to take a risk on presenting a controversial, gay-themed show in conservative Cincinnati.)
It's been said that Broadway shows are what bring new people into downtown performing arts centers, and last December's presentation of The Radio City Christmas Spectacular, which featured the Rockettes, was an economic boost during the holidays. After adding performances to a total of 26, the show set a new record in the Broadway Series' 14-year history as the highest-attended two-week run ever -- more than 65,000 people came downtown for the performances. The Broadway Series has already announced a return engagement for December 2001.
But the days of blockbuster Broadway tours have faded. A season that boasts a presentation of Annie on its last legs, Ann Margaret in a revival of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and a reissue of Fiddler on the Roof is certainly a step down from a 1997-98 season that offered Showboat, Rent and Disney's Beauty and the Beast. In fact, the Broadway Series' subscriber base, while still strong relative to many American cities, has diminished.
The series still has some clout, although the material seems to be getting kind of shopworn: The 2001-02 season will open in mid-September with a four-week run of The Phantom of the Opera. The much anticipated American tour of Disney's Broadway and international hit The Lion King begins in Denver in April 2002. Its seventh stop will be at the Aronoff Center in March 2003.
But these blockbusters are few and far between. In light of lackluster national touring productions that can be presented by the Broadway Series, more creative, riskier programming might be necessary to further boost Aronoff audiences. The question is whether CAA is willing to make those programming choices.
"You know, there have been ongoing discussions about there being a lack of activity," Loftin says. "First, it was Broadway was up and then Broadway was down. Like any other business, especially our business, there are good times and there are bad times. The trick is to live through the challenges and to do well beyond it. The numbers show we have had a very successful five years. There have been dips, of course. There always are."
Other art centers have made changes to ensure they continue to draw new and younger audiences. In 1997, the Brooklyn Academy of Music broke up its 1,000-seat Carey Playhouse to create a four-screen cineplex, café and bookshop. It makes one wonder what the Aronoff Center could do to attract younger arts patrons who currently stay away from its three theaters.
For the countless pedestrians who walk by it every day, the Aronoff Center feels remote, despite its location in the center of downtown. Cesar Pelli & Associates designed the facility as an L-shaped group of three modernist boxes, and its four-story office structure sits along Seventh Street like a metal hulk. The two-story Plaza 600 restaurant sits on the corner of Walnut and Sixth streets.
Above the Weston Gallery entrance, an electronic message board blends into the gray aluminum columns and wall sections. On this corner at Seventh and Walnut, the Aronoff Center most resembles a fortress. The overall feeling is that this is a building that doesn't want anyone to enter.
In need of some arts neighbors
If the Aronoff Center stands a chance at still making a noticeable impact downtown, it's become clear that it has to be part of a larger arts boulevard with several buildings adjacent to each other.
In Fort Worth, the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Performance Hall linked its construction to existing galleries, performance spaces and adjacent housing, stores and offices. In contrast, the Aronoff stands isolated in its own private block.
"In Newark, they looked at the project as a strategy for economic vitality," says Christa Mahan, director of marketing for the Cambridge, Mass.-based Graham Gund Architects. "Our experience has been that those projects are successful when people have a wider vision. In Newark, the center was part of transit-related improvements and landscape improvements."
Graham Gund Architects recently completed a $17-million arts center in Skokie, Ill., that's credited with breathing new life into the Chicago suburb. In Washington, D.C., the firm designed the new home for the National Shakespeare Theater as part of an urban residential development. In Cleveland, it's designing the new visitors center for the Cleveland Botanical Garden.
"I think you need to create forward-thinking partnerships so that people will come to a center because it's a destination," Mahan says. "Then they will come not just for the performances but for the neighborhood. It has to work with the community that surrounds it. But it's different in each case, and it's different for each neighborhood. The challenge is to meet the criteria for creating a world-class facility as well as being able to create a vibrant neighborhood."
Cincinnati planners and politicians looked to the Aronoff Center as that single, big-ticket project that would rejuvenate downtown. But the recipe for success in Chicago, San Francisco, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia lies in a smorgasbord approach of putting multiple attractions next to each other.
In Chicago's South Loop, the Harold Washington Library was joined by new academic facilities for Roosevelt University, Columbia College, DePaul University, the School of the Art Institute and the Illinois Institute of Technology.
In San Francisco, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the Museum of Modern Art experienced a sizable boost in attendance after the Sony Metreon, a cinema and retail complex, opened in their South of Market neighborhood.
 |
Photo By Jymi Bolden
|
Stage First Cincinnati Director Nicholas Korn (right)
performs at the Aronoff Center in his Company's 1999
production of Cyrano de Bergerac.
|
In Cleveland, I.M. Pei's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Great Lakes Science Center, the restored vaudeville theaters of Playhouse Square and the modern addition to the Cleveland Library combine to make its downtown a popular destination for tourists.
There's much hope that the new Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) at the corner of Sixth and Walnut streets will give a boost of energy to the Aronoff Center across the street. Still, CAA doesn't have to sit back and wait for the new CAC to open its doors. There's plenty of precedent for arts associations to be proactive when it comes to downtown development.
Pittsburgh's Cultural Trust -- operator of the Benedum Center, the Fulton Theater and Heinz Hall, as well as the new home for Pittsburgh Public Theater -- has restored building façades, murals and public art and made streetscape improvements in its downtown neighborhood. In Cleveland, the Playhouse Square Foundation is the majority owner of the Wyndham Playhouse Square Hotel, a retail shop and a parking garage built adjacent to the renovated theaters. Philadelphia's Wilma Theater, too, got a new facility within a city-funded hotel/parking garage complex.
As CityBeat has explained in detail before, Philadelphia organized state funds and private money to link existing arts institutions and new construction into the Avenue of the Arts (see "The Philadelphia Story," issue of May 4-10, 2000). The 30-block-long area has an annual economic impact on the city of more than $150 million.
True to its conservative fiscal nature, CAA refuses to play an active role in funding any downtown development. The idea of the Aronoff Towers, a high-rise apartment or office building with a luxury hotel, isn't likely to happen anytime soon.
"With any project anywhere, there are critics," Loftin says. "That's the natural state of things. There are people who didn't support the process, but I feel that CAA and the Aronoff Center is an unqualified success. I think it's not our concern what one or two critics think. Our concern is to run a good business and provide a service to our clients and to the patrons, and that's what guides us."
It's a warm Thursday evening, and the Fifth Third Bank Theater is open for business. The rehearsals are over. The set is secure. Stage First is ready to perform The Clouds in front of its opening-night audience.
Attendance is sparse. Fifteen people are scattered among the seats. It's clear that tonight's crowd is a small gathering of friends and supporters. Before the show begins, Korn steps onto the floor and thanks the audience for coming. He tells them he's confident they'll like the show and hopes they'll tell friends and co-workers to come to future performances.
Stage First can't afford many empty houses. At the end of the performance, the small crowd empties onto a quiet Main Street. The sandwich shop across the street is closed. Seventh Street is equally dark.
Downtown Cincinnati is noticeably quiet. It's as if the Aronoff Center isn't even open.
Wanted: A little creative thinking
In a perfect world, Cincinnati would be bragging about the Aronoff Center much as Newark brags about NJPAC. But Cincinnati has never really identified itself with the facility.
At a downtown souvenir shop, there are plenty of postcards of the zoo, Kings Island and Eden Park. Aronoff Center cards are noticeably absent.
But the center's future isn't entirely dim. Groundbreaking for the new Contemporary Arts Center takes place May 24. There are plans to create a citywide arts festival in celebration of the new CAC's inaugural season in 2003.
With a little creative thinking, the Aronoff/CAC nexus could be the southern end of our own Avenue of the Arts, winding up Walnut to 12th Street and encompassing the Main Public Library, a rehabbed Emery Theater, a relocated Art Academy of Cincinnati and Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, plus Music and Memorial halls to the west and Main Street art galleries and School for Creative and Performing Arts to the east. A proposed light-rail line running along Walnut could tie everything together into what CityBeat has dubbed "The T."
While Cincinnati has been sleeping, cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have used arts and culture to invigorate their downtowns. But without a lot of effort, the Aronoff Center could finally fulfill a destiny so many people thought was its birthright.
The Aronoff was supposed to set the stage for Cincinnati's downtown expansion. It could still happen. But it's clear the arts center is going to need some help. ©
