One cost-effective way to build the increasingly expensive arts
center is to combine it with apartments and retail.
One cost-effective way to build the increasingly expensive arts center is to combine it with apartments and retail.
Thanks to a consultant’s long-awaited research, the city council will consider this public-private union of the theater and capitalism Wednesday night. The body will also consider scaling down the entire project at the northwest corner of Seventh and Monterey streets and/or renting the entertainment portion out to other users.
Mayor Al Pinheiro does not intend to shrink the 28,000-square-foot center because it must accommodate future growth, he said, but he does envision a multi-purpose theater surrounded by shops and second-floor residential units because this makes more financial sense than a stand-alone arts center that the city would have to entirely finance. This is the latest financial riddle for the council that voted last month to bond the purchase of Gilroy Gardens for $14 million; it is also considering two separate bonds totaling $47 million for sidewalk repairs and a new library.
“This city should provide its art folks with a wonderful venue, but this city must also make sure it pencils out – that’s the bottom line,” Pinheiro said. “The land is already there, and the concept is outlined, so this (public-private partnership) should be a way to make those dollars really go far.”
The mayor is not just guessing either. He spent Feb. 7 walking around the weed-covered lot with Community Services Director Susan Andrade-Wax and Economic Development Corporation President Larry Cope. The three strolled along with a small crowd of well-dressed developers, who corroborated the practicality of bridging art and commercialism, Pinheiro said. The mayor also pointed to other projects such as the Hale Center Theater in Orem, Utah, where a developer built the 500-seat theater along with residential, retail and office space, and then the city furnished and equipped the theater.
But other council members do not see the charm of a multi-use building.
“The retail with apartments – that does not sound viable to me,” Councilman Bob Dillon said. “It’s not my idea of an arts center. I’m thinking of a stand-alone building, like the library, dedicated to the arts.”
Still, Dillon recognized the costs associated with a retail-less project: “Where’s the money going to come from – the operating costs? I’m not going to allow any depredation to the general fund for (the art center’s) operating costs.”
No matter what happens, Councilwoman Cat Tucker said she will not entertain any options postponing the center’s construction, now scheduled for 2012 with $8.7 million from the city, according to tentative budget figures.
“Maybe we should scale it down and add on in the future as needed and as money becomes available,” Tucker said.
As planned, the center will cost the city anywhere from $19 million to $23.4 million, up from the original $9 million the city planned for in 2002, according to work done by AMS Planning & Research, which the city hired late last year for $30,000.
As vice president of AMS, Robert Bailey said other cities with comparable theaters usually foot their operational costs, and Andrade-Wax has said other cities usually subsidize 30 to 40 percent of their operations, or about a few hundred-thousand dollars each year. Rohnert Park sells advertising on the city’s roadways to finance its center’s annual costs, Bailey added, and other cities have passed tax measures.
The non-profit Arts Council of Silicon Valley made a presentation to the council in November on the financial and symbiotic relationship between the arts and business. Still, Bailey said Gilroy can do whatever it wants: “The city council could very well say, ‘Thank you for your report, but we’ll go another way.’ ”
Council members such as Dion Bracco have said it is important for Gilroy’s project to stand on its own once built, partly because the city does not have a redevelopment agency, unlike most cities with arts centers, according to Andrade-Wax. A redevelopment agency cannot fund ongoing operational costs, but it can redirect existing taxes from state into local coffers for specific capital projects such as sidewalk and street repairs, façade improvements and seismic retrofitting.
That is why the Gilroy Foundation and the Gilroy Arts Alliance teamed up to raise $1.8 million – $1.5 million of which came from Don Christopher – for the center’s operational costs once the city builds it, according to Donna Pray, the foundation’s executive director. GAA President Carol Harris and other GAA members have said the group hopes for $3 million so it can earn enough interest to keep the center afloat without city money.
Fund-raising went on hold while AMS brain-stormed, though, because Pray said the foundation needs to know if there will be a design change that could affect their fund-raising efforts.
ARTS CENTER, THEN AND NOW
2002
– Cost $9.03 M
– Projected Use 199 days (29 city)
– Annual operating cost $152,000
– Construction costs $356/sq ft
2008
– Cost $19-$23.4 M
– Projected Use 127 days (29 city)
– Annual operating cost $300,000
– Construction costs $762/sq ft
