Jim Schutze is wrong. In an Unfair Park post earlier this week, the Dallas Observer columnist piggy-backed on Michael Granberry’s Dallas Morning News article on the under-construction City Performance Hall to characterize the entire Arts District project as the work of an upper-crust cabal bent on making this city’s arts and entertainment easier to access. The piece reads like a spoof of Schutze at his worst: sensational, if paranoid, persuasive, if atrociously loose with the facts.

But Schutze is not wrong for noticing the ongoing murmuring of small arts groups surrounding the City Performance Hall; he just throws blame in the wrong direction.

There are two entry points to this argument. The first revolves around the concept of an Arts District in general. Is it a good idea to cordon off an under-trafficked section of a city and plop down high-class museums and venues on vacant land? Is it good for arts groups? Is it good urban development practice?

I think we can all agree that it is a little too late to even get into that argument. If the idea of an Arts District is a well-meaning hold-out from an era of urban planning that sought to segregate every function of a city into neatly consumable packets, than, no, an Arts District isn’t a good idea for Dallas. But we’ve built it; we’ve invested oodles of money in it; so now we have to figure out how to make it work.

The second entry point into this argument revolves more specifically around City Performance Hall. The City Performance Hall is being developed as a way to allow smaller arts groups otherwise priced-out of the city’s other fancy new venues a space on what is now Dallas’ artistic center stage.

It is a laudable idea, and one that many arts groups welcome. (Despite Schutze’s protestations, why would most mid-sized theaters not want to be easier to access by attaching themselves to the higher profile Arts District? Artists want butts in seats, even if they are Park Cities butts.) But here’s the rub. The real problem with the City Performance Hall is not whether or not it is a good idea for the city to build a very nice venue to showcase some of the area’s smaller arts groups that are, sometimes, forced to produce work in less than optimal conditions, but rather whether the city has developed a venue that is affordable to these small arts groups.

That is the main concern of the arts groups Michael Granberry talks to in his article. And even though that piece resolves itself with a, “well, let’s wait and see and hope,” shrug, I think the answer to the question is a more decided “no.” Most arts groups will not find it advantageous to use the City Performance Hall.

Let’s look at why.

A Operational Disconnect

First off, as Granberry reported, the first year of the new performance hall is going to be a bumpy one. Most theater groups have already announced their 2011-2012 seasons. Different arts group operate on different schedules, but many are often planning multiple years in advance because they need to anticipate various production costs associated with specific program choices. Those need to be presented to boards, approved, locked down in budgets. Funds need to be raised.

According to the DMN article, the Office of Cultural Affairs won’t even talk bookings until February 2012. From OCA director Maria Muñoz-Blanco in the piece:

“We don’t even come on line until fiscal year 2012, which runs from Oct. 1, 2011, through Sept. 30, 2012,” she says, “so we won’t really begin taking reservations until February of 2012.”

That means half the hall’s first year, the space will be dark. And then, which theater groups will be flexible enough to rent the space for the second half of the year? From a revenue standpoint, the hall will start behind and it will have to make up those costs somehow. Plus, the OCA is talking fiscal years, while arts groups talk seasons. If there is doubt that the this current incarnation of the OCA is up to the task of managing an arts venue, here’s your reason to suspect a potential disconnect.

The Necessary Expansion That Will Never Come

The second problem with the City Performance Hall is the space itself. The idea for the hall was the product of a long collaborative process that included many members of the arts community who offered feedback about what they need. Yes, at 750 seats, the City Performance Hall fills a gap in the current venue offerings in the city. But the main hall was only part of the initial vision of the city-run center. What is now called “Phase 2” of the hall was supposed to include two wings on either side of the main hall which would feature flexible theater spaces, a gallery, and a café.

What numerous Dallas theater heads have told me is that what Dallas really needs is a quality black-box theater. Plus, with only institutional art spaces in the Arts District, a gallery at City Performance Hall would have immediately become a prized location for independent curators, adding much needed grass-roots energy to a district dominated by elite arts groups. As for the café, we’ve ranted enough about the need for caffeine and alcohol in the Arts District.

Disconcertingly, in the Granberry article, Dallas Arts District executive director Veletta Lill says that there are still plans for Phase 2 to be built, but:

“The city has not set a date for the next bond program,” Lill says, “and when it does, I do not anticipate the second phase of City Performance Hall being a part of it.”

And why should it? The city and private donors have already spent so much money on the Arts District, most of the plan is constructed, and by the time a bond vote is set, the Performance Hall will look complete. How, in difficult economic times, do you make an argument that you also need a Performance Hall expansion? The problem here is the two wings should have never been considered an expansion in the first place — they were vital to the overall use and viable functionality of the City Performance Hall by broadening the venue’s appeal beyond those groups who just need a traditional stage in an auditorium that seats 750 people. By splitting up the project, the ship has likely sailed on the City Performance Hall being what it is supposed to be.

A Cost-Prohibitive Hall for the Little Guys

But the third problem, and the most major, speaks to the disconnect between how a venue like City Performance Hall operates and how most arts groups operate. Speaking with Theatre 3’s Jac Alder, the long-time Dallas producer said that while Dallas has built some magnificent buildings, it still hasn’t quite got the equation down for making spaces work for small arts groups:

“We didn’t get it right economically because the bricks and mortar expenses are long-term capital expenses, but we all operate on year-to-year operational costs,” Alder said. “When you have to start paying for any or all of your capital expenses out of your operating, the art-form can’t support that — it just can’t support that, can’t be done.”

The only possible solution is for the capital costs of the City Performance Hall to be covered by outside funding rather than the cost of renting the building by arts groups. The possible sources of funds in this scenario would be increased funding from the city or private charitable contributions. But the city continues to cut its arts budget, and, as Alder says, the philanthropic community has been squeezed so much already.

There is another option. Sitting right next to the City Performance Hall is the AT&T Performing Arts Center, which is currently fighting its own budget battles. With revenue for its fist year lower than expected, the ATTPAC has brought in a new CEO whose main task will be raising the money to cover the gap in both capital and operational funding, precisely what will be needed at the City Performance Hall once it is completed.

In off-the-record conversations with AT&T Performing Arts Center officials, they have confided that they suspect that at some point the city will ask the ATTPAC to take over management of the building. The potential cost of the City Performance Hall may become a budget drain for the city who will seek to ditch those losses on an organization that is already strategically seeking out ways to cover similar budget issues. If the City Performance Hall becomes part of the ATTPAC, you can reasonably expect it to become even more expensive for an arts group to put on a performance in the venue, due, in part, to the ATTPAC’s controversial requirements to use union stagehands and serve Wolfgang Puck food.

So what happens with the smaller arts groups who hoped for a new venue in the City Performance Hall? Exactly what is going on now: intrepid, inventive, and creative arts groups just figure out another way to put on their shows — with or without the city of Dallas.

Image: The original renderings of the City Performance Hall. Only the central portion of the building will be built. Credit: © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP

Write the author at peter.simek@dmagazine.com