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Too Good To Be True?
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Business New Haven
8/21/2000
By: BNH
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A new state-funded study commissioned by the city of New Haven recommends spending more than $250 million for new and improved facilities for the performing and visual arts in downtown New Haven (see story, page 18).
The largess needed to create a new 2,300-seat theater ($70 million), a new facility for Long Wharf Theatre ($45 million), a downsized Palace theater ($20 million) and much, much more, would not be possible without significant public "participation" - meaning, of course, your tax dollars at work.
And while we instinctively distrust public financing of private enterprise - be it for shopping malls or concert halls - the scope and timing of the recommendations by Theatre Projects Consultants (TPC) of Fairfield bear remarking upon.
In the early and mid-'90s, many figures in the city's arts community complained - with some justification - that New Haven's political and corporate leaders didn't adequately "support" the arts. All the attention and excitement at that time, many argued, was being drained by the newfound craze for a big-times - a glitzy new taxpayer-funded tennis stadium, relatively modest improvements to Yale Field for the New Haven Ravens, projected enhancements to Veterans Memorial Coliseum to accommodate what would become the Beast of New Haven hockey franchise.
What a difference a half-decade makes. The men's tennis event is long gone, as is the hockey team, and Ravens have been much better at catching flies than drawing them.
And while we applaud the efforts of SMG's John Burnap to return hockey (albeit a lower minor league than the Beast played in) and lure the Continental Basketball Association's Connecticut Pride franchise here from Hartford, it nevertheless appears that, in the year 2000, the arts-sports axis has tilted decisively in favor of the former.
Whether the New Haven Symphony Orchestra plays in Yale's aging Woolsey Hall or a brand-new acoustically-engineered-for-music concert hall, New Haven always has and always will be the state's cultural capital. Certainly the notion that concentrating the New Haven's principal arts offerings in one discrete downtown district will benefit producers, audiences and the city as a whole merits further discussion and research.
What we would hope to see - and to date have not - is greater private-sector momentum and buy-in behind this effort, which was commissioned by city government, paid for by state government, and chaired by former United Illuminating CEO Richard Grossi (to his credit, we hasten to add).
Long Wharf Theatre, for instance, hasn't been screaming for the public sector to build it a new theater - and the LWT boaard of directors have by no means reached consensus that they wish to relocate downtown in any event. And there is (or there should be) a healthy skepticism on the part of arts organizations to take on government as a full partner - a partner which, as a principal investor, may very well down the road wish to exercise some influence over the content of the art itself.
Perhaps the paradigm of paying for arts has been irretrievably altered since the time of the Medicis - or even of the Mellons. But when talk begins about building lavish facilities at public expense for groups that haven't asked for them, it is appropriate for business leaders to ask tough questions.
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