Transition from renting to owning our own theater
Printed From: Community Theater Green Room
Category: Theater Administration
Forum Name: Running Your Theater
Forum Discription: General questions about how to make it work
URL: http://www.communitytheater.org/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=5029
Printed Date: 4/28/24 at 2:06pm
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Topic: Transition from renting to owning our own theater
Posted By: TomT
Subject: Transition from renting to owning our own theater
Date Posted: 4/07/11 at 5:30pm
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We are a 30-year-old, 92 seat community theater in Redding, California, and we’re in a planning and fund-raising process that we expect to result in building, owning, and operating our own 240 seat theater facility. We currently have a building site and about half our funding. Our city is in support, and we have a great Capital Campaign committee. None of us has been through this process before and we know there’s a lot we don’t know. What we would love is to talk with / hear about “lessons learned” from some folks who have been through a similar transition from renting to building and owning a theater facility. If you have experience in this area, or know someone who does, we’d appreciate contact information so we can do a little brain picking. Success stories (and how they were achieved) would be most appreciated, but we’d also like to know about pitfalls to engineer out of our future. Thanks for any info you can share on this. ------------- Tom T |
Replies:
Posted By: David McCall
Date Posted: 4/08/11 at 4:40pm
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One thing that is almost always overlooked is the fact that you will need to add more wiring from show to show. Over the years you will need to run wires from everywhere in the room to every other place in the room. Extra speakers, lights in unexpected places, visiting sound systems and lighting, dressing room monitors, intercoms and many other things that may not even exist today. Legally, you can not run wires through doorways or punch holes in the walls.
You need to think about all of the places that you might want to hang a light someday and make sure there is structure there to mount the lights or structural points suitable for hanging a truss or pipe.
Putting power in the room is going to be expensive so have them put in plenty from the beginning. I'd like to see 200 amps 3 phase. That will probably give you enough for future expansion. Many shows use more than that today, but you may not be able to afford to pay the electric bill for more than that the way things are going. Also lights are getting more efficient so less power will be needed.
If you are going to fly stuff, I suggest something over 40' so that you can use 20' high drops. 40' is along way to go up on a lift to move things around or do maintenance. At that height I'd like to have a walk out grid. I'm getting too old to climb a ladder that far so I would want stairs if possible. One advantage to a walk out grid is that you can cut back on the number of line sets in the original install and add more later without a major install. Put in the infrastructure for plenty (perhaps 24 or more) so that you can expand.
Don't let the contractor talk you into buying a bunch of crappy equipment. Buy less or buy used to get quality. You can always add more as time goes by and you can always rent extra stuff. This applies all kinds of equipment.
Make a place to put the orchestra. It doesn't have to be a pit anymore, but that is still the norm. You might plan for a deeper pit, or even consider a lift in your design and just put in a temporary floor until you can afford to buy the lift. Any pit is better than no pit even if it is only 3' deep.
Those wonderful show rooms in Vegas are just huge black boxes with a lot of infrastructure so that they can completely re do the room when they change shows. The walls are essentially just big sets.
The long and short of it is to plan way ahead. It is highly unlikely that you will be able to buy everything you can think of right out of the gate, but you can think ahead and be sure that the infrastructure to support it is available.
------------- David M |
Posted By: JoeMc
Date Posted: 4/08/11 at 10:08pm
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The last time I had anything to do with building a comeatre, was at a regional centre about 200km's south west of here. The theatre group found a 2 storey building up for sale in a local commercial area. They fronted the bank & made a deal to pay the yearly interest on the principal sum to the bank, while taking possession of the building & converting it into their new theatre. Which meant they had, like your group, about 50% of the buildings value in their saving account, which was freed up for the building conversion & equiping the theatre, with ongoing working capital. After a few years the value of the properties in the area rose dramatically, so much so they eventualy paid out the principal sum to the bank & owned the building out right. I can't remember the real estate term/name for this type of transaction? Have a word to your bank I'm sure this type of loan could be applied to building the theatre from scratch, as you have the land & fair amount already in the bank. The bank doesn't loose as they pick up the interest on their money & the comeatre profits with a theatre fully equipped, which can be owned at today's price later on in the future. David is right about planning for the future needs of the theatre, that can be easily added or extended in the years to come. In most instances with theatre I have found the most resources are put into the aesthetics, while the stage & ancillary equipment is cut back. Architects are the worst for this & rarely listen to any input from theatre techies or concern themselves with function or a viably working venue ------------- [western] Gondawandaland "Hear the light & see the sound! TOI TOI CHOOKAS {may you always play to a full house!} |
Posted By: JoeMc
Date Posted: 4/12/11 at 12:32am
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I found your proposed plan of the venue;-
http://riverfrontplayhouse.net/images/stories/pdf/rp_capital_campaign.pdf - DOWNLOAD THE CAPITAL CAMPAIGN BROCHURE Having a quick squint at the plan it seems you may need to change around, so your 'loading dock'/'scene shop' buts directly on to the stage, rather than the 'greenroom/viewing area'. Which would give a flow through & better logistic access to the stage. ------------- [western] Gondawandaland "Hear the light & see the sound! TOI TOI CHOOKAS {may you always play to a full house!} |
Posted By: Rorgg
Date Posted: 4/12/11 at 2:04pm
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Joe, I was able to understand every word of those two posts. You feeling all right, mate? |
Posted By: JoeMc
Date Posted: 4/12/11 at 11:59pm
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G'donya cobber! Sorry about that & thanks for your concern.
 It could be because I have just spent a pleasent 2 weeks in the Cardiac ICU ward & it might be down to the stuff they pumped into me.
I should be back to normal in a week or so, when the drugs wear off? ------------- [western] Gondawandaland "Hear the light & see the sound! TOI TOI CHOOKAS {may you always play to a full house!} |
Posted By: David McCall
Date Posted: 4/13/11 at 11:38am
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Wow
I'm sorry to hear that your ticker is giving you trouble.
We all love you here and hope you have a fine recovery.
David ------------- David M |
Posted By: JoeMc
Date Posted: 4/15/11 at 11:21pm
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Thanks David! I feel rather embarrassed & don't know what to say, which in its self is amassing. The dicky ticker is all my fault for indulging in too much caffeine & nicotene over the years. I had a quadruple 'cabage' bypass plumbing job on the old ticker & I believe I still have about 5 years left on the warranty period. This time I went into 'Charlies' Hospital with high blood pressure & subsequently a heart attack while I was being examined in the Emergency Department, which I didn't realise this was happening at the time. However I have now attained my 6th stroke, of whith only 2 being major. Besides all that rubbish the Quack tell me I have had a successful recovery, not sure what they mean by that Except I'm now visually impaired in my left eye & keep walking into doors,walls & people on my port side @ least that's my excuse! Thanks again! ------------- [western] Gondawandaland "Hear the light & see the sound! TOI TOI CHOOKAS {may you always play to a full house!} |
. as I have never been a success in my life! Posted By: jayzehr
Date Posted: 4/16/11 at 5:11pm
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Oh, man! Sorry to hear that, Joe. We'll be sending you some white light from up here...  |
Posted By: JoeMc
Date Posted: 4/16/11 at 11:52pm
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Thanks jay!
------------- [western] Gondawandaland "Hear the light & see the sound! TOI TOI CHOOKAS {may you always play to a full house!} |
Posted By: TomT
Date Posted: 4/25/11 at 5:01pm
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Thanks for all your thoughts on this, David. This kind of thorough planning ahead works out to be so much less expensive (and frustrating) in the long haul. How have you prepared a new building for possible future wiring needs? It seems like we could "plumb" the walls / ceiling of likely wiring destinations with 2-inch conduit so we'd have enough space to pull needed wiring from one area to another when we discover we need it? Any other ideas on how you'd approach this? ------------- Tom T |
Posted By: TomT
Date Posted: 4/25/11 at 5:39pm
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Hey JoeMc, thanks for your ideas on the financing piece for our theater. Property values have gone down so much locally in the past 3 or 4 years they could hopefully only go up from here. So maybe this kind of arrangement with the bank would benefit us. We're committed to moving ahead with this project and want to strike a workable balance between a good looking building and having good technical equipment.
We'll be in the heart of downtown where there has been a lot of restoration / renovation and many new businesses, like nice restaurants, bars, and wine bars, opening. We think we'll be a benefit to them by bringing in more potential customers for their businesses, and visa versa.
The floor plan we have posted on our website is now obsolete, and I haven't seen the new one yet. We found out that the existing building we intended to remodel didn't have the structural integrety for a second story, and now we'll be tearing down and starting new. Good for us because it'll save a bunch of money and give us more flexibility in how we configure the building. ------------- Tom T |
Posted By: David McCall
Date Posted: 4/25/11 at 7:21pm
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I tend toward to prefer troughs where ever possible. If you loose your pull string in a crowed conduit it can take a while to recover. A while is something we don't have a lot of :-)
One trick I've seen is to run two conduits in parallel and put a closed loop of nylon rope down one pipe and back up the other. That way you don't loose your pull line and you can use one tube for sensitive stuff like mics and other audio and use the other for noisy stuff like DMX and power.
For example, you will probably need to run an audio snake from the stage to the house mixing position. What that snake will look like will change in the future. For now it is mostly a bunch of tails with XLR connectors and would be a challenge to fit through a 2" conduit.
What would make me happiest would be essentially a catwalk that would go down both walls all of the way from the stage to the booth at the back of the room. This catwalk would pass by the box boom positions and have access to the catwalks in the cove positions. It would also have various openings to allow cables to enter the auditorium. That way all of your "temporary" cables can just run along these catwalks and get to just about anywhere in the room without having to go through doorways or areas where the public an see them, and/or trip over them. Don't forget that various feeds may be needed all of the way to the lobby. If you run out of money to run wires and buy equipment in the initial stages of building your new room you can just rent what you need and buy good stuff as you get the funds, rather than skimping on quality the way most people do.
If you have these hidden passageways you can adapt as technology changes. At the moment we plug a lot of our lights into cables that run back to dimmers. However, lately there are getting to be more kinds of fixtures that just want local power and a DMX feed. The DMX feed is starting to be replaced with Ethernet wires.
Even sound is changing. It used to be that all of our power amps were in a rack somewhere and wires ran out to the speakers. Now some speakers have the amps built in, so like the lights, they just need power and an audio feed, but that is changing over to delivering the audio as Ethernet too.
Perhaps someone more knowledgeable can speak to any requirements to seal the holes between the "backstage areas" and the public areas.
------------- David M |
Posted By: museav
Date Posted: 5/27/11 at 5:00pm
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It may seem like I'm being overly critical based on where you actually are in the process but it is also not real clear where you are in the process.
Do you have an Architect, Engineers, Consultants, etc. involved? There are going to be many site, code and general design and construction issues that can arise and you'll need guidance if you don't have the expertise in-house. How was the $2,000,000 total cost and the breakdown shown developed? Has somebody done a preliminary construction budget or does that represent more a budget that you think is possible and that you hope will support the goals defined?
Similar with the Operating Costs. Perhaps this is part of the "Other" but I did not see any costs for the actual facility operation such as utility costs, maintenance, consumables, etc. As Owner everything from the electric and water bills to roof repairs to replacing lamps to cleaning the floors to toilet paper will be up to you. In fact general building maintenance, storage and building systems (mechanical, electrical, plumbing, etc.) accommodations seemed rather limited, if not missing, in the original floor plan.
Speaking of which, while it sounds like the floor plan will be changing, there may be some things to learn from the original plan. For example, you stated 240 seats but the plan seems to show 170 seats. It also seems to show no ADA seating and simply placing wheelchairs in the aisles as shown in the graphic is not allowed. The plan also shows no FOH positions and no space for an audio rack or dimmers, maybe those are on another level but I suggest not limiting yourself to mixing from an upper level booth at the rear of the space.
You mention the community being able to rent the facility for films, speakers, etc. which is probably a good idea in terms of income, but also means that you have to have a venue that supports those. For example, a projector, screen and AV sources could be integrated into the space or rented as needed, the former costs more up front but represents potential incolme, the latter is less cost initially but most of any profit is going elsewhere. You may want to design the facility to support integrated systems even if you can't initially install them. Films may also affect your production costs in terms of licensing (don't forget rights costs in your operating costs as you will likele be responsible for obtaining rights for events held there).
While it's never a bad thing to have extra conduit, paths, etc., there can be code and other issues to consider. For example, you can't run different Classes of service in the same conduit, so running power and DMX in one pipe in an installed system is not permitted. Big conduits are nice, but may be difficult to run in walls or terminate in standard boxes. And while powered speakers, audio over twisted pair (not necessarily Ethernet), digital snakes, etc. are becoming more prevalent, they still often come with an associated cost. And you'll probably want some form of production communication/intercom system. ------------- Brad W. |
Posted By: TomT
Date Posted: 6/13/11 at 5:00pm
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Wow Brad, thanks for all the questions and potential issues you're raising in your post. Sorry to take so long in replying, but was on vacation for three weeks and didn't have my password with me. I haven't been on our new-building committee, so don't have the details to respond to your specific questions. I'm part of a task force that is helping advise the board in some critical areas, so what I'm trying to do is gather all the info I can that will help them be successful in bringing about this new performing facility. Our task force meets again this week, and I'll present the ideas, concerns, and questions gathered so that we can help the board be as informed as possible as they move forward. I'll ask that some one on the new-building committee respond to your questions so we can get any further thoughts you have to offer. Appreciate your help, Brad.
Tom Taylor ------------- Tom T |