Oregon daily emerald., May 18, 1983, Section B, Image 9

may 18, 1983
emerald arts & entertainment supplement
Financial reality hits center hard
By Doug Nash
01 th* Emerald
The party’s over.
Nine months after the Hult Center
for the Performing Art’s glorious, star
studded opening, Eugene is experienc
ing the harsh financial realities that
arise when a city of 100,000 takes on a
world-class project.
City officials project a $563,000
deficit for the center by the end of
fiscal year 1984, with no obvious
remedy. Things look even worse in the
long range. Executive Director Dick
Reynolds estimates the center will
always need an extra half million
dollars above and beyond the $110,000
it currently receives from the city’s
room taxes and the $350,000 it gets
from the Eugene Arts Foundation.
What’s more, there is no certainty
the Arts Foundation subsidy will con
tinue at its present level, Reynolds
says.
"We’ll always have a deficit,” he
says. “There’s not a performing arts
center in the country that’s not
operating without one.”
All this seems a far cry from the
center’s June 1980 mission statement,
which states, “The Center shall strive
toward eventual financial in
dependence by maximizing depart
mental revenue sources, seeking
special grant support, using available
room-tax revenues and pursuing a pru
dent fiscal plan for expenditure of
available funds.”
City council members, who still say
the center has a chance of breaking
even within five or six years, were
nevertheless surprised by the deficit’s
size.
"We never said we’d be financially
independent," Reynolds says. “We
said we’d strive for it. We’ll never make
it.”
The center needs a general tax base
in order for it to survive, he asserts. But
when asked why such public funding
wasn’t worked out when citizens ap
proved $18.5 million to build the place
in 1978, Reynolds answers honestly.
"The voters never would have gone
for it.”
Eugeneans Rachele Raia and Tom
Heusel feel betrayed.
“In 1978, *hey promised they would
not be coming back for more money.
Now, the taxpayers are forced to step
in again. Here we are, the anonymous
donors, asked to sign a blank check for
nothing,” Raia says.
Raia and Heusel are members of
Citizens For Open Government,
originally organized to oppose the city
council s renaming of the center after
a local millionaire who donated $3
million to the Eugene Arts Foundation.
The group is presently trying to make
people aware of what Heusel calls “the
incredible Hult hoax.”
In its planning stages, Raia and
Heusel allege, officials knew there
would be a deficit but were afraid to in
form the public.
“Their estimates were way off from
the beginning," Raia says. “Basically,
they started a huge business without
enough money to run it.”
Reynolds agrees. The center opened
with $100,000 in its till, nowhere near
the amount necessary for a $3 million
operation.
“Nobody starts a business of this
magnitude without some sort of
operating reserve,” he says. “We did.”
Reynolds gives no sing'e reason for
the deficit. Rather, he says, it is due to
higher costs that arise from a first-year
operation, a wide variety of acts, and
the price level they must stick to.
“We try to assure there’s a balanced
menu of performances available,” he
says. “At the &-me time, you can't
charge enough rent on the facility to
cover the overhead. No one would buy
the tickets.”
Raia and House' blame the shorfall
on a plethora of problems, ranging
from expensive, plastic coffee cups us
ed for concessions to “exotic acts”
that attract little public interest and
lose money.
"They’re talking about running a
world class center in Eugene. It’s got
to be scaled down to where it meets
the checkbook of the city," Raia says.
Officials had hoped a good portion
of the Hult Center tab would be picked
up by the Eugene Arts Foundation,
which is given $90,000 by the city to
collect donations and subsidize local
arts. Although it has received some $8
million in pledges, much of it is tied up
in property, stocks and other forms of
long term capital.
Some large donations, including the
Hult gift, will not provide any financial
support until after 1986-87.
Indeed, in the last fiscal year the
foundation provided only $350,000 to
the center and $150,000 to seven local
arts groups.
“The big donors are just looking for
tax write-offs,” Heusel says. “The
whole foundation has turned into a tax
deductible dump site.”
Gary Williams, assistant director of
the foundation, says long-term pledges
are normal practice in the endowment
process.
“The principal of the fund is held,
while the earnings are available to
use,” he said.
Wil!ia.ns is unable to make projec
tions on a yearly basis, but says the
foundation plans to pay out $2.7
million through the 1986-87 fiscal year.
James Reeves, general manager of
the Eugene Symphony Orchestra, says
the foundation should be more
specific in its predictions.
"If you're going to do good financial
planning, you can’t go from one year to
the next. We cannot count on the arts
foundation for survival,” he says.
Reeves, whose organization has
sold over 90 percent of its tickets this
year, says the community should pull
together to support the center, much
like other public institutions are
funded.
"We better get it straight in our
Continued on Page 4B
$
sr Willamette Valley
I Folk Festival
Page 2B
University presents
'Merchant of Venice’
Page 7B