Visitors to the Warner Grand Theatre must sign a waiver acknowledging the potentially dangerous conditions in the building, which has been vacant for two decades.
The floorboards beneath the aged carpeting in its aisles are warped and uneven. Its seats are stained and worn. The plaster behind the stage has cracked off in a large swath. A giant scar rings the room where a ceiling once divided the space into two theaters – a concession Marcus Corp. made to consumer trends before movie palaces like this one were replaced by suburban multiplexes.
Mark Niehaus sees beyond the dilapidated concession stand and the lack of ground floor bathrooms. He can picture the stage being extended beyond the current rear barrier of the theater, so it’s large enough to fit a whole orchestra. He sees the ornate plaster and metal décor being restored to its former glory and hears violin bows being pulled across strings as the audience filters in.
Niehaus, president and executive director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, is leading a bid to renovate the Warner Grand to become the symphony’s new home. First, the MSO faces the monumental task of raising $120 million to make the move and the financial stability of the nonprofit a reality.
Revenue models
During the Great Recession, philanthropic donors around the country pivoted away from the performing arts and toward social services. Milwaukee was no exception.
Performing arts groups like the MSO went through lean times.
In 2014, the MSO had to seek $5 million in emergency donations to avoid closing up shop. It slashed the budget with layoffs and benefit restructuring, while adding more performances to bring in additional revenue.
The organization made it through the crisis and has been working to recover in the ensuing years. Its 2016-’17 season allocation from the United Performing Arts Fund was $2.55 million, more than any other group. Its fiscal 2017 budget is $18 million, with 64 percent expected to come from contributions like UPAF’s. Ideally, just one-third would come from contributions, with another third in earned revenue from ticket sales and concert fees, and the last third from investment income off its endowment.
So far, the MSO has raised $76 million for its capital campaign, which is expected to decrease contributions to 56 percent of revenue. While the organization isn’t releasing names, it said more than 50 donors have given substantial gifts so far to help it move out of The Marcus Center for the Performing Arts.
“Really the reason this project has had so much momentum is because it’s a civic project that goes beyond just the symphony,” Niehaus said. “This isn’t just the symphony saying, ‘Feed me.’ This is the symphony saying, ‘We can rationalize our business model, we can save an historic gem that likely will be lost if we don’t do this and we can be a catalyst for Milwaukee’s main street, West Wisconsin Avenue.”
UPAF, which provides annual operating funding for 15 performing arts groups in southeastern Wisconsin, also provides a boost for special campaigns in some situations.
“In the case with the building, (the symphony is) really running this independently from UPAF,” said Deanna Tillisch, president and chief executive officer of UPAF. “They keep us informed on a regular basis. We certainly have a vested interest in what’s happening because we think it’s important that Milwaukee has a symphony.”
The Milwaukee Ballet, on the other hand, has sustained its financial health through a diverse revenue stream, including its ballet school. It thrives on earned revenue. Together, ticket sales for its Marcus Center performances and school tuition make up 62 percent of the organization’s revenue. Its 2017 budget is $6.4 million.
“Milwaukee Ballet has always run a tight ship,” said Michael Pink, artistic director. “Like many arts organizations, not just in Milwaukee but across the nation, we have observed gradual changes in the degree of corporate sponsorship for the arts. However, we are in the fortunate position to have been able to increase our earned revenue throughout the past years.”
The Florentine Opera Co. has a $3.3 million budget for 2017, and brings in about 25 percent earned revenue. It performs across four venues, including the Marcus Center.
To some degree, performing arts groups in Milwaukee do compete for audience, funding and venues, said William Florescu, general director of the Florentine.
“We’re a mid-sized city and if you look at the amount of offerings that we have in this city, it’s incredible in relation to our size,” he said. “That’s both an opportunity and a challenge, because how thin can you spread it all?”
The Milwaukee Repertory Theater has been able to attain a high proportion of earned revenue, at 63 percent. It is expected to bring in $12.6 million in revenue this year, said Chad Bauman, managing director.
The Rep is putting on 630 performances of 12 plays this season across four venues. It owns three of the theaters in which it performs, which is not always ideal, Bauman said.
“What a lot of people don’t understand is the cost to maintain and operate those venues over time is often vastly under-projected,” he said.
For example, The Rep has had to replace a roof for $100,000, upgrade a fire system for $325,000 and stop a building from sinking for $2 million in the past three years.
“The pro is that you control the operations of them,” Bauman said. “I think the con is that you’ve got to pay for them – not just the creation of the venue, but over time the maintenance, the operations, everything.”
That’s something The Marcus Center knows all too well. When the MSO departs, it will have an $850,000 revenue shortfall to fill, said Paul Mathews, president and CEO.
“We’d prefer that (MSO) stay, but we understand that they are pursuing the possibility of their own hall,” Mathews said. “So if they choose to go there, we’ll certainly work with them on a transition plan.”
Matthews said the MSO departure opens up opportunities for the ballet or Florentine to add more performances, but much of the revenue difference will likely be made up by selling more seats at existing performances.
“Our first responsibility is the revenue impact,” Mathews said. “We have a history of balanced budgets here and we intend to continue that. We’re not expecting the ballet and the opera to fill up the majority of those weeks by any means.”
It also doesn’t plan to fill up the 20 open weeks with Broadway series shows, because the market for the shows Marcus brings in is not big enough to support that. But it may add another week or two of Broadway and some one-off commercial events.
The Marcus Center has multiple revenue sources, including three smaller halls inside the center, a parking structure, a gallery and a banquet hall for private events. It hopes to eventually redevelop the parking structure into a mixed-use development to pull in additional revenue.
Audience attraction
Alex Barry moved from New York to Milwaukee in 2005 to handle traffic operations for the Marquette Interchange project in his job as an engineer at AECOM. He immediately was drawn to the city’s arts scene.
“I found that I really liked (Milwaukee) and a big part of the draw for me has been the performing arts scene,” Barry said. “It was the first professional ballet that I’d ever seen live and onstage and I was stunned by the professionalism and the quality of the work.”
Barry, 63, now subscribes both to the Milwaukee Ballet and to the Florentine Opera. He sees how Milwaukee can compete with other cities for talent because of these assets.
But one challenge is introducing people to the performing arts for the first time.
“I’ve taken young colleagues from work. I’ve taken them to the opera, I’ve taken them to the ballet and they’re blown away,” Barry said. “You’ve got to get people in the seat the very first time and I think the majority of them, after that, will be sold on it. It’s that initial hesitancy.”
By their very nature, arts groups are built to take creative risks and try new concepts. But it can be challenging to strike a balance between the avant-garde and the performance that will bring large crowds in the door.
The Florentine puts on about 50 community performances per year, and several are popular operas, such as “Aida” and “La Boheme.” It hires up-and-coming international singers to come in and perform the classics with its Florentine Opera Chorus, as well as relatively unknown operas.
“Opera still has a large traditional audience,” Florescu said. “Ten years from now, this will be a different discussion, but right now the challenge is you still have to do the traditional…but then you have a whole new era of audience that gets it a different way. The paradox here is that while you know that ‘Aida,’ for instance, will sell a lot of tickets, it’s also one of the most expensive operas to put on.”
“I look to find a balance between the programming of new works and pieces of historical value,” Pink said. “My goal is to balance audience expectation with artistic aspiration.”
Entertainment options abound in the digital age, but the performing arts groups in town simply take that as a sign they should market themselves on social media, step up community engagement and collaborate with other groups.
“Even if you were just going to say the competition is amongst the performing arts, it’s a pretty crowded field,” Florescu said. “But we also compete against for-profit entertainment options, as well, and there’s a lot of projects going on in Milwaukee right now.”
“I don’t know that I would say (audience attraction is) a challenge,” said Julia Glawe, executive director of the Milwaukee Ballet. “People, regardless of their age, are looking for experiences. It’s not just about sitting in your seat and watching something from the stage. It’s really more about having that experience. Many of the participants share it on social media.”
“We can use digital media to our advantage; will it engage people who have no interest in dance? Maybe. I don’t see us as competing in the media entertainment market,” Pink said. “If you already have an interest in dance then you know nothing supersedes the impact of the live performance.”
The ballet supports a dance-oriented film each year at the Milwaukee Film Festival and has collaborated with young professional groups NEWaukee and FUEL Milwaukee to bring ballet to a millennial audience. It offers extras like backstage tours and open rehearsal at the Milwaukee Art Museum, and aims to broaden its reach with offerings like sensory-friendly performances and Tour de Force lessons for children with disabilities.
Last month, the Milwaukee Ballet, Florentine Opera and Marcus Center announced an integrated programming showcase called the ArtsBridge Project to reach new and crossover audiences.
The Florentine and The Rep also have community outreach programs, working with schools and other organizations to introduce children to the arts.
“We’re having a lot of luck with making inroads with young audiences and more diverse audiences,” Florescu said. “We’re having a lot of diversity on stage and I think that makes a difference.”
The Rep has seen audience attendance increase over the past several years, which Bauman attributed to its mix of plays.
“One of the great strengths of (multiple venues) is everybody can find themselves at The Rep,” he said. “One day we might be doing a new play around Muslim American themes. The next day we might be doing a classic American musical. The next day we might be doing ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ We have the ability to reach multiple audience segments at one time.”
Artforms
In a well-worn two-story building at Fifth Street and National Avenue are the Milwaukee Ballet’s studios and offices.
The ballet’s 23 professional company dancers have just returned from a two-week break and are beginning rehearsals for Pink’s Snow White piece, “Mirror Mirror.” In a practice studio, Pink, known for his character- and emotion-driven storytelling, runs through a scene with several leading artists, who move around large silver trees from the set.
Wiry and muscular, professional and second company dancers clad in spandex pass among three other studios, some to work on their parts in pairs or alone. In one studio, a half dozen members of the corps de ballet rehearse a group dance with ballet master Denis Malinkine. In all, the dancers have more than seven hours of structured rehearsal each day.
Around the corner, three tailors sew costumes for “The Nutcracker” and mock up the outfit patterns for Pink’s “Beauty and the Beast,” which will make its world premiere in April 2018. In a nearby room, shoe coordinator Krista Allenstein sits among neatly organized stacks of clear boxes, each marked with a dancer’s name and the custom shoemaker he or she prefers, sewing boot covers onto shoes to go with the “Mirror Mirror” costumes.
In the afternoon, a group of children will crush in for Milwaukee Ballet School & Academy classes. There are about 600 children enrolled in the school, who attend class in Walker’s Point, Brookfield and Fox Point. The popular school brings in about 23 percent of the ballet’s annual revenue, as well as future talent. It could be larger, but is capped by space and student-teacher ratio, according to the ballet.
“Our Milwaukee Ballet School & Academy is a place where learning to dance is a recreational pastime or a vocation,” Pink said. “One of our newest professional dancers, Lizzie Tripp, is a graduate of our program.”
As reported by BizTimes in December, the Milwaukee Ballet plans to build a 40,000-square-foot, one-story building to house its new headquarters in Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward. The plan was confirmed by neighborhood Alderman Robert Bauman and Joe Vella, president of the Italian Community Center, which has agreed to sell the ballet a 1.8-acre parcel on its property for the project. Months later, the ballet still remains tight-lipped about the plan and has declined to comment.
The Milwaukee Ballet has been in its current building since 1980. For the 2016-’17 season, its professional company is putting on 32 performances at The Marcus Center.
At the Marcus Center, the MSO shares stage time in the center’s Uihlein Hall with the Ballet, which becomes a major challenge in December when the ballet is performing the Nutcracker, Neihaus said. Scheduling conflicts at the Marcus Center have been a major reason the MSO has wanted its own venue.
MSO performances – of which there are about 135 per 40-week season – are led by music director Edo de Waart. de Waart has appeared as a guest conductor with every major orchestra in the world. He has been assistant conductor to Leonard Bernstein of the New York Philharmonic, and Bernard Haitink at the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Holland. He has worked for the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and for the Netherlands Radio and Television Music Centre. He has conducted in San Francisco, Minnesota, The Netherlands, Sydney and Hong Kong.
He joined MSO in 2009, and will conclude his tenure as music director with Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, ending May 28.
Over the past several years, the MSO has started to offer more themed performances of music from popular movies, like “Harry Potter” and “La La Land.” In this way, it can attract new audiences and give them an idea of what to expect, Niehaus said.
With the new venue, his vision is to make going to the symphony an experience from the moment someone walks in the door, similar to going to a baseball game at Miller Park, he said.
“All orchestras, and I believe theaters and ballets and museums, face what I call attendance anxiety,” Niehaus said. “Attendance anxiety is relieved when you know what to expect. By giving people these signposts of a themed concert or some of these movie things or a pops offerings, you know you’re going to be seeing something that is not completely unfamiliar to you.
He insists the symphony is for anyone, and he plans to curate an experience the MSO controls at the Warner Grand. That could include a dinner themed around that night’s performance, he said.
“Do we care when you clap? No. Do you have to wear a tie? No.
“We don’t need to reinvent the core product. Beethoven and Brahms and Mozart and … the classical composers alive today are just as alive and vibrant as they ever were, but we can do a better job of updating the delivery method for the 21st century.”
Venue conflicts
The MSO isn’t the first orchestra in the country to move into a refurbished movie palace downtown. They are regularly retrofitted to be symphony halls.
“It would be fun to think that I’m some kind of genius coming up with a master plan for the symphony,” Niehaus said. “The bottom line is this idea of the symphony moving to this building has existed since way before me. “
In fact, Niehaus was principal trumpet in the orchestra when it conducted an acoustical test in 2001 in the Warner Grand, and it sounded incredible, he said.
“I remember vividly being able to hear the orchestra in a way I never had before,” he said. “It’s much deeper than it is wide. The shape of a shoebox is better for orchestra acoustics. This very high balcony is fantastic for acoustics because the sound doesn’t get trapped under the balcony. All of the decoration, it all deflects sounds in wonderful ways. They didn’t build any of it for acoustical reasons. We got really lucky.”
While the MSO considered moving to the Warner Grand then, there wasn’t an appetite for a capital campaign because the Calatrava addition was being built at the Milwaukee Art Museum. There was also too much traffic on North Second Street to expand in that direction because it was a major artery to the highway before the Marquette Interchange was rebuilt. And the MSO’s need wasn’t as great because there were no Broadway shows at the Marcus Center during its season.
Now, with the help of architecture firm Kahler Slater, the MSO is moving forward. It plans to bump the back wall of the L-shaped theater into North Second Street so it can create a larger stage that can be seen from all areas of the theater, as well as extend that east end of the theater with an addition that would replace the building next door, to enlarge the lobby so it can hold a gathering of 1,700 people before and after performances. It will install all new seats for a 1,750-person capacity, put in bathrooms and elevators, and create a second floor gathering space for revenue-generating private events.
The symphony has garnered a $750,000 grant and street reconstruction assistance from the city to assist in moving the rear wall while retaining its historic and structural integrity. It also has initial approvals from the State of Wisconsin and the National Parks Service for historic preservation tax credits, which will cover 40 percent of the cost of the historic restoration of the theater.
The whole project is expected to cost the MSO about $75 million, and the remainder of the funds being raised will go toward strengthening the orchestra’s balance sheet by paying off a $6.5 million pension liability, adding $20 million to its endowment and providing bridge operational funding until the MSO moves in.
The long-term success of the symphony depends on raising the additional funds beyond construction costs.
If the fundraise goes as planned, construction will begin in the fall and the MSO will be playing concerts in the Warner Grand by fall 2019. This move is necessary because there were too many scheduling conflicts at the Marcus Center, particularly in December, Niehaus said.
“We need less in back-of-house amenities than the opera, the ballet or Broadway does,” he said. “They need a lot of dressing rooms. They need a scene shop. They need to raise and lower a curtain before the concert. It’s a theater. It’s a different experience than a concert hall. Most cities our size have a dedicated theater and a dedicated concert hall. So what we’ve been asking is for one room, Uihlein Hall, to serve the symphony, the opera, the ballet, and most recently in the last decade, Broadway. If there were 465 days in a year and two Decembers in that year, we could make it work.”
The ballet hasn’t thought much about the MSO moving out of The Marcus Center, Glawe said.
“If the symphony moves out of the Marcus Center, we know that there’s an opportunity for other things,” she said. “It could (mean more ballet performances), but it’s not something that we’ve really addressed internally yet.”
The Florentine Opera Co. relies on the MSO for several of its performances at The Marcus Center, so it would be impacted by the change in venue. The Warner Grand would not be appropriate for opera, Florescu said.
“That would involve them bouncing back and forth between two different houses and we’re researching how that would work,” Florescu said. “Nothing exists in a vacuum, so one move impacts what other folks are doing.”
The Florentine would, on the other hand, have opportunities to put on more performances at The Marcus Center if the MSO departs, he said. It’s evaluating the costs and opportunities in a wait-and-see approach.
Fundraising feats
As downtown Milwaukee is undergoing a renaissance a number of civic entities besides the MSO, including the Milwaukee Public Museum (which needs a new building) and Discovery World (which is planning an expansion), are also working on large capital projects. Fundraising for numerous big projects could put a strain on Milwaukee’s philanthropic community.
How many of them can be supported? There are a lot of asks out there, but there’s also momentum for the MSO, Tillisch said.
“They have such strong support in the community and people are really enthusiastic and energized about this move for them,” she said. “There’s an energy right now, with all the other things that are happening in this community. The symphony is right up there as a project that people are really excited about.”
UPAF saw contributions dip during the recession, but over the past five years its annual campaign has grown 23.5 percent.
“This is an incredibly generous community and the reason why people don’t give is because they haven’t been asked,” Tillisch said. “There are untapped wallets in this community.”
Chad Bauman said Milwaukeeans tend to donate only when there is a crisis for a nonprofit, such as when MAM’s artwork was being damaged by water.
“As much as Milwaukee focuses on crisis in some cases, there’s got to be an equal emphasis on fundraising for opportunity,” he said. “Milwaukee is competing now with cities like Oklahoma City and Cleveland, of all places, and Austin and Kansas City. These are cities that really invest in opportunity and vision and it’s paying off for them. Quite frankly, Milwaukee is going to be in a competition for talent. We need to invest in a visionary future for Milwaukee that’s going to put us where we need to be to be competitive.”
“It’s sort of a chicken or an egg because if we don’t have these assets, attracting talent and businesses to the community will be difficult,” Tillisch said. “We need to have the cultural assets, we need to have the sports, because it puts us on the map. This community realizes that.”
