Curtains up! Kiel reopening could quicken Grand Center’s rise
HUY RICHARD MACH/POST-DISPATCH
If all goes as planned — and the approval process seems to be well-greased — the Kiel Opera House will reopen in November 2010 with a production of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
There’s some irony in that, given that some supporters of the Fox Theatre and other entertainment venues around town see the Kiel as a Grinch that might steal their audience.
We’ve wondered about that ourselves, not so much because of concern about the Fox, but about the Grand Center district where the theater is located. The restoration of the “Fabulous Fox” in the early 1980s gave Midtown a second entertainment destination (along with Powell Hall) and helped spark the effort to turn Grand Boulevard between Lindell Boulevard and Washington Avenue into an arts, culture and entertainment district.
That effort has resulted in the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, new facilities for KETC-TV (Channel 9), the Grandel Theatre, the Sheldon, the Kranzberg Arts Center and several smaller institutions and the anticipated arrival of public radio station KWMU’s studios. It helped bolster the remarkable remaking of the St. Louis University campus. And while Grand Center is not yet everything its planners hoped it would be, it is well on its way.
As great as it would be to see the Kiel reopened after 18 years, we wondered if wounding the Fox would undermine two decades of public and private investment in Grand Center. Inasmuch as the public is being asked to give up $58 million in tax dollars for the $74 million rehab of the Kiel, does it make sense to use public dollars to undermine other public and private investments?
So we made a few phone calls to city officials, folks connected with institutions in Grand Center and people who know the entertainment business in St. Louis. The consensus: The Fox will lose business when the Kiel reopens, but not so much that it can’t survive.
But the Fox must work more closely as a partner in Grand Center, and the city must become more engaged in supporting that work. If that can happen, the entire arts and cultural scene in St. Louis can be enriched by a revitalized Kiel Opera House.
There now seems little doubt that the Kiel deal is going to happen. Last week, the Urban Planning and Zoning Committee of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen approved the deal on a 13-1 vote. The full board will get the bill in June.
St. Louis Blues’ managing partner David W. Checketts and his partners will put $16 million into the project.
The city will issue bonds and give up $1.5 million a year in ticket taxes on Blues hockey games to help back them. Federal and state tax credits will finance the rest.
Mr. Checketts’ group hopes to book events in the Opera House’s 3,200-seat main theater on 92 dates in the first year, rising to 110 by year 10. The partners also expect to book 66 events in the opera house’s 700-seat side theaters the first year, growing to 93 by the end of a decade.
The Fox’s backers worry that among those events will be some of the touring Broadway shows that are the Fox’s bread and butter. No more than six such shows come to town in most years. A competing venue inevitably will lead to bidding wars between the two promoters.
The Kiel group counters that self-produced shows and high-end concerts will be Opera House mainstays.
Besides, they say, the Fox has offers 1,000 more seats than the Kiel — a huge advantage in that more seats mean more revenue.
That may be so. But the Kiel and the Fox will compete for a lot of business, and the Fox will lose some of it.
The Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Earth City could lose some summer concerts to the Kiel.
Competition is inevitable, but it also creates opportunity. Venue operators have to adjust and get more creative in their booking. The entertainment audience today is far more segmented than it was 20 years ago. The result has been a greater variety of venues and entertainment opportunities.
There’s the St. Charles Family Arena, St. Louis University’s new Chaifetz Arena, the Touhill Performing Arts Center at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, the Pageant in the Delmar Loop, the Roberts Brothers’ Orpheum Theater, the Loretto Hilton Theatre, shows at casinos and numerous small stages that didn’t exist when the Kiel went dark in 1991.
Some of the shows compete for audience. Others are complementary. Bookers have to be smart and know their audiences.
The Fox can adapt to the challenge posed by the Kiel Opera House by hitching its star, as never before, to the rise of Grand Center — to the advantage of both, and to all of St. Louis.
The Fox and its grand marquee stand at the center of the arts district. But even some of its admirers say that sometimes the theater has stood apart from the rest of Grand Center and its ambitions. For all its artistic and theatrical successes over more than 25 years, the Fox has not been a catalyst for economic development in Grand Center and it hasn’t sustained so much as a neighboring restaurant.
Fox Associates President Richard Baker responds to this claim tersely. The Fox has had “very little input on Grand Center governance,” he said.
Here’s hoping that changes and that the Fox and Grand Center see the Kiel Opera House’s emergence as an chance to re-engage their considerable creative and commercial talents more aggressively and cooperatively.
Mayor Francis Slay and other city officials can help. In their excitement over what Kiel might mean to downtown, they should remember what Grand Center means to Midtown.
The district could benefit from coordinated parking plans, the development of a hotel and a more prominent role for St. Louis University. The city could be helpful in all those efforts.
Arts and entertainment doesn’t necessarily have to be a zero-sum game.
With the loss of the Ambassador, Kiel Opera House will reclaim the title of a large venue with an intimate elegant ambiance. The acoustics were great. Some of my all time favorite concerts occurred there. It may be harder to judge which acts will draw the right amount of fans to fill the venues. The booking agents will have to be more skilled at their jobs, but the Fox and the Ambassador operated simultaneously for a while and that was also when Kiel Opera was still operating as well as the American so it is likely that they will find a way to compete and remain viable. If any building in St. Louis deserves to be restored to its former glory Kiel Opera House gets my vote. The Fox and the Sheldon will remain the jewels of their respective capacities.
Why don’t we take the money that would have gone to Ballpark Village for the restoration? At least we know Kiel Opera won’t be another white elephant.
Reopen Kiel? Nah! It is money down the drain and will close again in a few years. Besides, what sound is more pretty than the sound of a homeless person pissing on the Kiel walls? Yep, good acoustics.
Seriously, the city should make the Blues pay more of the bill. It was part of the deal that got when they got money to build the Kiel Center.
What people in this town don’t understand is that we aren’t losing out on entertainment options because we have too few theaters, it’s because we have too few people who are willing to shell out big money to see top shows. If you go to the Fox or Powell Hall on a typical night, you will see hundreds of empty seats. Maybe if we invested all that Kiel money money into creating jobs — supporting old and new industries in the area and giving them tax incentives to locate or expand in town, we’d boost our population and our economy. Then, there might come I time where we actually NEED another first-class entertainment option in town.
This town has some great concert and art venues. It is very impressive. There are few cities that equal St. Louis.
The emphasis in nearly every article and posting I read seems to be that other venues don’t want any competition. The fact is, wonderful venues like the Fox are saying they don’t want UNFAIR competition. Why are taxpayers footing the lions share of the bill for a private enterprise? If the New York owners of the Kiel think it’s a great business decision to compete against the Fox and other venues in town, then why aren’t THEY paying the majority of the restoration costs like the Fox owners did in the early 80’s? I wonder if it’s because the Fox owners are St. Louisans who wanted to restore a beautiful old theater that they loved, and the Kiel owners simply see the opportunity to have millions of taxpayer money given to them.
Wow, it never ceases to amaze me the amount of out state hate there is for the city on these post comment sections.
Without the city there would be no county, without the county there would be no St. Charles, Wentzville Wright City etc or at least in its present state. Having first class entertainment is part of having a thriving cultured region.
Without that we would be South Dakota, a nice place, but boring as plain oatmeal. Sometimes I like to eat at places besides McDonald and Applebee’s and see something beside the boatshow at Bass Pro.
I am not sure I understand the point of this editorial but I do agree the Kiel is a goose and Grand Center is the gander. What is good for Kiel will be good for all theaters. This should make us more of an arts and entertainment destination but it won’t if the Fox spends their time and money crabbing about this. We cannot forget this is not about subsidizing some newcomer to build something from the ground up (Ballpark Village, for instance) but to finally restore a civic landmark (anyone disagree?) that will be operated by the owners of the Blues who have proven to be capable and committed. This is low risk and high reward, and therefore an excellent move by the city.
Your editorial fails to support your headline. You fail to explain how casuing the Fox to lose business will help Grand Center. Vague suggestions of more cooperation between the Fox and Grand Center does not translate into Grand Center rising. Tthe idea that hurting the Fox is the only way for city officals to pay attention to Grand Center or to remember to help the Fox in the future doesn’t make any sense. You stated it clearly, reopening Kiel, with taxpayer money will hurt the Fox and cause it to lose business. You stated that there few Broadway shows available for theatres yet you still buy the Kiel developers claims that they can produce their own shows to fill their venue. Let’s me honest here…you tried to come up with reasons why it would be OK for the city to hurt the Fox by subsidizing a new competitor and you failed and ended with some strange statement about entertainment not having to be a zero sum game that really has nothing to do with the rest of your editorial. It seems like you could not find anything positive to say so you just sort of rambled to a vague conclusion.
Let’s have a fair debate…let’s consider what else the city needs…could tax dollars be better spent on hiring more police, firefighters, or teachers…could the money be better spent helping merchants survive thie downturn…could the money be better spent some other business that benefits more people…the city needs a movie theatre, why not subsidize reopening the theatre at Union Station…subsidize something that we don’t have and need instead of hurting an established and thriving business. We should have learned already from the Admiral, the Spanish Pavilion, the vacant shopping mall, and the struggling convention hotel that our city government is not the best or the brightest judge of developer proposals.
Enough of reducing every issue to “we need more teachers, more police, and better streets.” There isn’t a city in America that doesn’t trot that argument out everytime there is a tax-assisted program for something intended to create jobs, generate tourism, and improve the quality of life for the people who live there. If all cities did was focus on those issues (good ones, I will admit), we would have one policeman, teacher ,or firefighter for every resident, and the roads would be made of space age materials. It is not plausible. Cities are the sum of many parts. That can include beautification, transportation, safety, tourism, whatever. We would all like more police, fire and teachers but cities also need more. In this case, the city is doing with the Kiel Opera House what is overdue. The Opera House is a civic treasure, it is not St. Louis Centre and definitely not Ballpark Village. It has been neglected and abused, but now finally comes along a plan to revive it at minimal expense to taxpayers. I cannot wait to go back (I was a regular in the 1970’s and 1980’s) but it won’t affect the number of shows I go to at the Fox. Both facilities will be great for our region for many years to come. By the way, if the Fox Theater doesn’t think it can survive after being in this business for the last 30 years or whatever, then they have a serious problem.
There is so much ignorance in this editorial, I’m not sure where to start. Why all the Fox bashing? Just because they don’t want $58M in public funding for their competition? I think that’s a perfectly reasonable concern for them to have.
>> The Fox must work more closely as a partner in Grand Center…even some of its admirers say that sometimes the theater has stood apart from the rest of Grand Center and its ambitions.
The Fox is a for-profit entity. Grand Center is a not-for-profit entity. I would guess they have completely different “ambitions.”
>> The Fox offers 1000 more seats than the Kiel - a huge advantage in that more seats mean more revenue.
No, not necessarily. That’s only an advantage if the seats sell. Not sure about the arrangements at the Fox, but for most theatres, when you book a show, it’s based on capacity…the bigger your capacity, the more you pay. If you don’t fill the seats, you’re better off in a smaller venue.
>> For all its artistic and theatrical successes over more than 25 years, the Fox has not been a catalyst for economic development in Grand Center and it hasnt sustained so much as a neighboring restaurant.
It’s not the Fox’s job to be a catalyst for economic development it Grand Center. Isn’t that Grand Center’s job? They’re not doing well, are they? Nor can the Fox be held responsible for restaurants not making it…if you’re going to blame the Fox for restaurants closing, I guess you’ll have to give them credit for the success of the Bistro, Steak House and Vitos, to name just three. Based on personal experience, I’d blame the Grand Center restaurant problems on poor management, poor service, unreasonable prices and unreliable hours.
>> The district could benefit from coordinated parking plans, the development of a hotel and a more prominent role for St. Louis University.
Yes, a hotel or two would help Grand Center…but a more prominent role for SLU? I’m sorry, I have no idea what this means. More grass and fountains? More streets vacated and buildings torn down for SLU parking lots? Yeah, that should make things all better.