Arlington Heights seeks public's input on Metropolis through online survey
The village of Arlington Heights is asking residents and patrons to take an online survey to share their opinions on the Metropolis Centre for the Performing Arts as part of a study looking at the struggling theater's value to the community.
Officials will use the survey results and other data to decide what to do with the downtown theater that continually uses, and loses, village money. The survey, part of a $24,000 study by Johnson Consulting, can be found at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Metropolis_Community_Input.
The survey asks questions about how many and what shows people have attended at Metropolis or why residents have not frequented the theater.
Other questions ask residents their feelings toward Metropolis, whether they support using food and beverage tax dollars to fund ongoing operations there and whether more programming variety would increase their likelihood to visit the theater.
Respondents are also asked to describe how they would feel if Metropolis was managed by another company or closed entirely.
All options are on the table as officials try to figure out what to do with Metropolis, though several trustees have said they don't want to see the theater close.
In October, the village board agreed to give Metropolis $450,000 in additional funding to keep it open but with stricter control over the money and an eye on long-term solutions for the struggling theater. The other option was to let the theater close when it ran out of money at the end of the month.
Arlington Heights has been actively subsidizing the facility 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 public investment so far is more than $5 million.
Johnson Consulting, which was then CH Johnson, did a study for the village about Metropolis in 2003 when Arlington Heights was considering purchasing the theater, officials said.
The firm will discuss the results of the online survey and its more recent study with the Metropolis Oversight Committee and the village board before officials make decisions about the theater's future in spring 2015.