Home Industries Arts & Culture Milwaukee Rep reaches $78 million fundraising goal to rebuild theater complex

Milwaukee Rep reaches $78 million fundraising goal to rebuild theater complex

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Samantha Dietel

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Sep 10, 2024 10:00 am

Rendering of the Wells Street entrance for the Milwaukee Rep's Associated Bank Theater Center.

Associated Bank Theater Center - Wells St Entrance Night Time — Rendering of the Wells Street entrance for the Milwaukee Rep's Associated Bank Theater Center.

The Milwaukee Repertory Theater announced Tuesday that it has reached its $78 million fundraising goal for the Associated Bank Theater Center project. Nearly 600 donors contributed to the Powering Milwaukee Capital Campaign, which will be kept open to raise additional funds for items that were previously removed from the project’s plan in order to cap

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The Milwaukee Repertory Theater announced Tuesday that it has reached its $78 million fundraising goal for the Associated Bank Theater Center project. Nearly 600 donors contributed to the Powering Milwaukee Capital Campaign, which will be kept open to raise additional funds for items that were previously removed from the project’s plan in order to cap the cost at $78 million. The Associated Bank Theater Center will be built in the same space as the Milwaukee Rep’s existing Patty & Jay Baker Theater Complex at 108 E. Wells St. in downtown Milwaukee and is set to open in fall 2025. The theater project “remains on time and on budget,” according to the Milwaukee Rep’s news release. The entire $78 million raised for the project came from private philanthropy. Construction began earlier this year. The Milwaukee Rep overcame a global pandemic, high inflation, strained philanthropic resources and a lack of public funding to achieve this goal, Milwaukee Rep executive director Chad Bauman told BizTimes. The Milwaukee Rep first announced its capital campaign to renovate its theater space in February 2020, Bauman said, but the effort was stalled when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in March 2020. The Rep relaunched the campaign in September 2021, he said, and did not raise any money before that. Inflation posed a problem for the Milwaukee Rep’s campaign. The initial plan for the project included a $60 million price tag, Bauman said, but by the time the company relaunched the campaign in 2021, inflation rates required the campaign goal to be increased to $75 million. Due to additional inflation, that was eventually increased to $78 million, which Bauman said “was probably the max we were going to be able to go.” “That is relatively a 5% increase in a time period where I think inflation was between 20 and 25%, so what that meant was we had to trim some of the scope of the original project and prioritize mostly the public-facing aspects of the project,” Bauman said. This left “several significant things” on the cutting room floor, he said, so the Milwaukee Rep’s campaign will continue in hopes of raising additional funds for those items. According to the Rep’s news release, the additional renovations would include:

Renovating the 5th floor theater administration offices and restrooms and make them ADA compliant
Renovating the 4th floor common area and kitchen
Building new Herro-Franke Studio Theater dressing rooms to increase accessibility
Adding exterior signage on the RiverWalk

“What most of the public don’t see is that on floors four and five of our office spaces here, there’s nearly 100 people that are working behind the scenes every day to bring the magic to the stages and the programs and the community in which we serve,” Bauman said. “We are not addressing any of their working spaces, so right now we have faltering equipment, carpets that are 50 years old, all of these things, and none of that is in the scope of this project.” The Milwaukee Rep will receive budgets for those additional items, Bauman said, but he thinks raising another $2-3 million will cover the costs. “There are people that have communicated to us that they still want to be a part of this once-in-a-lifetime project and campaign, and we hope with their support, we’ll be able to do that,” Bauman said. Bauman said the Milwaukee Rep sought grants and public funding at the local, state and federal levels, but those “requests were not funded.” “We knew that we were going to have to do this almost exclusively — if not exclusively — using private funds,” he said. Support from private donors Without public funding, the Rep turned to Milwaukee’s philanthropic community. Bauman said there has been a “significant demand on private philanthropy” to support numerous campaigns. This was a challenging environment to navigate, Bauman said. “There is a lot of competition right now for private philanthropy in Milwaukee,” Bauman said. “Some of that I think also has to do with the pandemic. The campaigns that would have launched in 2020, 2021, 2022, were delayed and then that put them on top of campaigns that were planned for 2023, 2024.” That the Milwaukee Rep was able to meet its campaign goal in just a few years “showed how much the theater means to southeastern Wisconsin,” Bauman said. He said the theater had a “compelling case” when presenting its campaign to the community. “We were asking not only for something that we needed for our community, but we hadn’t made this type of ask ever before,” Bauman said. “So I think people took us — our request — very seriously, because we don’t make many of them. And they understood that in order to continue to have word-class theater in southeastern Wisconsin, this was an investment that the community needed to make.” Bauman also said donors had “a lot of faith in our ability to steward those gifts once when they were made, and a trust in our organization to use those donations wisely.” Ongoing construction, announcements to come Since the theater held a groundbreaking ceremony in May, major construction updates include “demolishing the main lobby, completely gutting the Powerhouse Theater, adding structural reinforcements throughout the basement to support the weight of new equipment and removing the third floor in the Oneida Street Power Station to make room for the new Checota Powerhouse Theater fly system,” according to the Milwaukee Rep’s news release. The Milwaukee Rep will announce the new theater’s inaugural production season in early 2025, as well as “grand opening festivities,” according to the news release. “We will be able to produce work now that we will be able to tour around the country and internationally, and send onto commercial runs on Broadway that we’ve never been able to do before,” Bauman said. “That will increase Milwaukee’s brand as a hub of creativity and innovation, and really solidify us as one of the national leaders in theater.”

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