Can Metropolis survive? How other suburban theaters do it

Arlington Heights officials tonight will discuss whether to give the Metropolis Performing Arts Centre $450,000 more in village funding or to let the struggling theater close, even as several other theaters around the suburbs get varying levels of municipal support that help the local arts community flourish.

While a few theaters are able to survive on ticket sales alone, many have some level of public support. Officials at those theaters said municipal support is essential to keeping the doors open and bringing the arts to their communities.

“It's the norm for a city to participate in some way in supporting the arts,” said Tim Rater, president and CEO of the Paramount Theater in Aurora. “You have different models with different degrees of support that show how much the city values that organization.”

Arlington Heights has been actively subsidizing Metropolis Performing Arts Centre since 2005, using money collected by the village's food and beverage tax. Including the $2 million the village spent to buy a portion of the Metropolis complex in 2005, the total investment so far is $4.7 million.

Even with that funding, Metropolis has been struggling for several years and recently told the village that without more money, the theater would have to close by the end of October.

The issue has reached a point where village officials must decide to either go all-in or pull out completely, officials said.

“We've been putting Band-Aids on it for a long time now, so we're at the point where we have to decide,” Mayor Tom Hayes said last week. “I don't think we can go forward with just Band-Aids anymore.”

As the village decides what to do, officials may look at the relationships between other community theaters and their municipalities, a study of which would show varying levels of financial support and operational control.

The Genesee Theater has been part of Waukegan since the 1920s, but the city got involved only 15 years ago, said General Manager Jan Gibson.

The Genesee — which up until that point operated independently as a theater and a movie house — closed in 1989 after years of decline and remained shuttered for a decade before Waukegan bought the building in 1999. The city poured $23 million into the Genesee and reopened it as a 2,400-seat theater in 2004.

“We would not have reopened without the city's intervention,” Gibson said.

Now, the theater is run by the nonprofit Friends of Genesee and pays $1 rent each year to Waukegan, which still owns the historic building and takes care of outdoor maintenance, Gibson said.

“It's been a really nice relationship; it's been very healthy,” she said.

The theater pays its bills through ticket sales and donations. It is able to break even easier than Metropolis, which seats only about 350, because it has room to bring in larger names and higher-priced shows, Gibson said.

Although Waukegan owns the building, the city doesn't have any direct operational control. In recent years, the mayor of Waukegan suggested the theater do a Spanish-speaking show to attract the city's growing Hispanic population. Genesee managers took it under consideration and decided the idea was worth pursuing, she said.

The Paramount Theater in Aurora receives $510,000 a year from the city via a head tax at the Hollywood Casino, said Rater, who was executive director of Metropolis from 2002 -07.

That funding has been in place for nearly 20 years, Rater said, and has made a substantial impact on the quality shows Paramount brings to the community.

As far as operational control, the mayor appoints all nine board members to the Aurora Civic Center Authority, which governs the 1,900-seat venue, Rater said.

That is different from Arlington Heights, where there is little village operational control over Metropolis except for the village board approving its annual subsidy and the mayor appointing one or two members to its board.

The Paramount's money goes into the general operating budget, where the board and Rater decide where it can best be used.

“The mayor doesn't say, 'This is the show we should book.' It's a board-driven decision,” Rater said.

“Without that money we would be a different operation,” he said. “I don't think we would have the impact that we do on the community. That support allows us to reach more people and bring more people to the heart of Aurora that otherwise we could not.”

Rater said the relationship has been positive and is expanding. The city asked the Aurora Civic Center Authority to also oversee its new outdoor amphitheater that seats 8,500 people, Rater said.

When municipal funding for a theater decreases, programming often declines as well. The Raue Center for the Arts in Crystal Lake, a nonprofit, rents the facility from the Civic Center Authority of Crystal Lake, a government agency, and gets grant funding from the Crystal Lake hotel-motel tax that must be reapplied for each year. Annual funding has ranged from $41,000 to $150,000, said Richard Kuranda, executive director.

“In years where it's been reduced, we have had to reduce our programming and our staff,” Kuranda said.

The center makes between 35 percent and 45 percent of its revenues on box office sales, with the rest coming from sponsorships, rentals, grants and donations, he said.

The Raue Center, which is working to pay off debt on renovations that were done more than a decade ago, has full operational control of the 750-seat theater, Kuranda said.

At the other end of the spectrum in terms of financing and control are places such as Schaumburg's Prairie Center for the Arts, which was created by the village and never intended to be self-sustaining.

The Prairie Center was built in 1985 and is funded from the Schaumburg general fund as part of the village's cultural services department, said Director Betsy Armistead. The theater is about the size of Metropolis, with a capacity of 442 seats. Everyone who works there is a village employee.

Last year, the Prairie Center hosted more than 800 events, a quarter of those being rentals to outside organizations. Ticket sales brought in $220,000 for the village in 2013. The budget for the cultural services department was $2.5 million, but that includes activities other than the operation of the Prairie Center.

Similarly, the Hemmens Cultural Center, which seats more than 1,200, is owned and operated by Elgin, which in 2014 budgeted just over $1 million from its recreation fund to support the venue.

In Palatine, Cutting Hall, part of the original Palatine High School that closed in 1977, is owned and operated by the Palatine Park District.

Cutting Hall hosts amateur and professional productions in its 430-seat auditorium. The Palatine Park District budget does not break out how much is spent annually on Cutting Hall.

As Arlington Heights decides on a course of action, directors of other theaters said they hope Metropolis stays open.

“It's always a struggle with the arts, but we hope they survive,” Kuranda said.

Rater, the Metropolis alum, said he believes it needs more support in order to continue, but also needs to make changes.

“They can't let it continue as it is,” he said. “But it (closure) would be a tremendous loss for Arlington Heights and the surrounding communities. It's not easy to commit dollars to a project, but sometimes it's harder not to.”

The village board will discuss the future of Metropolis at a special meeting 7:30 p.m. today at village hall, 33 S. Arlington Heights Road.