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HotCity moves to Grand Center; ArtLoft in limbo
(by Kara Krekeler - June 04, 2008)
On the main page of HotCity Theatre’s website, there’s a jubilant announcement reading “We’re moving to a space with bathrooms!”
So when HotCity opens its 2008-09 season on Sept. 19, it won’t be in the ArtLoft Theater on Washington Avenue downtown. Rather, the contemporary theater company will be at the new Kranzberg Arts Center in the old Woolworth building in Grand Center.
HotCity’s Managing Director John Armstrong said that while “ArtLoft has been really good to us,” the decision to move to Grand Center was based primarily on the fact that the Kranzberg center will offer more amenities for patrons — including the aforementioned bathrooms — and a long-term home for HotCity, which never had an official lease with ArtLoft.
“As an arts organization, you always have to think for the long term. So moving was always in the back of our heads,” Armstrong said. “And as ArtLoft grew more ‘rustic,’ we started thinking about it more.”
But the HotCity staff and board didn’t seriously consider moving out of the downtrodden theater until they got a call from Grand Center Inc. asking if the company was interested in taking up residence in the Kranzberg center. Despite an increase in the cost of rent, Armstrong and his cohorts jumped at the chance.
“It really comes down to an amazing idea. You have to take it. Opportunities like that don’t happen very often,” he said. “If we didn’t take this, someone else would have.”
Armstrong said there’s also a greater chance for collaboration with other arts groups in Grand Center, particularly with Muddy Waters Theatre and Upstream Theater, both of which have also signed on to perform at Kranzberg.
“Grand Center has a history of putting arts organizations together. You can’t not collaborate,” Armstrong said, adding that HotCity already works with several other organizations due to the fact that its office is in the Centene Center for the Arts, which hosts offices for dozens of arts organizations.
But mostly Armstrong said he’s excited by the prospect of theater that’s a bit off the beaten path being available in Grand Center.
“We’re excited to bring our brand of theater to Grand Center. We’re ready to bring some attitude and something affordable to a Midtown location,” he said.
While its move is great news for HotCity, it has placed the ArtLoft Theater in limbo. Over the last few years, the 15-year-old theater has slowly been losing tenants, and HotCity was the last theater company to call it home. Today, the ArtLoft sits vacant with its owners debating their next move.
“At the moment, we’re letting the space be dormant. We’ve had different theater companies ask to use the space, but for now it’s going to remain dormant,” said Tim Boyle, one of the building’s owners. “It was a very rough space when we opened it, and it’s a very rough space today. We’re not willing to invite the public in anymore in its rough state.”
ArtLoft opened in 1993 as a performance space for The New Theater, a now-defunct theater company formed by Agnes Wilcox, who currently heads up Prison Performing Arts. Wilcox and Boyle opened ArtLoft in an attempt to prove that downtown St. Louis could be a viable destination for the arts.
“In 1993, downtown was a ghost town, especially at night,” Boyle said. “ArtLoft was on the forefront of knowing that people would go downtown” if you gave them a good reason.
During its early years, ArtLoft hosted only a small handful of productions each year, with each one drawing around 20 audience members per show. But in the theater’s heyday a few years ago, it was hosting productions 35 weekends a year and attracting closer to 10,000 to 15,000 patrons annually, Boyle estimated.
But as the theater’s schedule grew, so did its maintenance bills. Boyle estimated that he and his partners threw at least $20,000 a year into simply maintaining the building and have never realized a profit from it.
“When you’ve been subsidizing the operation of a facility for 15 years, one of the major costs of running it is the ongoing maintenance of the infrastructure. It’s difficult to do that when you’re running in the negative anyway,” Boyle said.
“The owners pumped a lot of money into that space that they’ll never get back. But there’s a lot that the city still requires,” said Scott Miller, artistic director of New Line Theater.
New Line produced its quirky musicals at ArtLoft for several seasons before leaving in 2006 to perform at the Ivory Theater in south St. Louis.
Due to conflicts with the Ivory’s management, New Line has left the Ivory after just two shows; High Fidelity, the final show of its 2007-08 season, will be performed at Washington University’s Edison Theatre, and next season the theater company will take up residence in another Washington University property — the former Christian Brothers College high school on Clayton Road.
“The ArtLoft was a very cool place to work. We probably never would have left if the Ivory hadn’t looked so good,” Miller said. “I would love it if someone came in with a big bag of money to fix it up.”
According to Boyle, that’s the only way ArtLoft would reopen. The theater needs serious work to bring it up to code and make it safe for audiences, and Boyle and his ownership partners are looking for a way to reopen the performance space and at least break even on the venture.
“The reality is that a theater like ArtLoft cannot operate in the black without some kind of outside support,” Boyle said, adding that outside support could come in the form of government subsidy, private donors or even arts funding. “We think we’ve done our part to fulfill our promise to the arts community and the downtown economic development effort.
“But the book on ArtLoft is not necessarily finished. Just maybe there’s a sequel coming up.”
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