 | |  | | | A bridge connects Denver's convention center parking garage with the Denver Performing Arts Complex. The center's theaters host operas, symphonies, Broadway blockbusters and regional shows.
(Helen Richardson/The Associated Press)
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DENVER - Like a pubescent teen struggling at times with achy joints, pimply cheeks and a squeaky voice, Salt Lake City's cultural community itches to come of age.
And Utah's capital knows just what it wants to be when it grows up: Denver.
After all, Salt Lake City's bigger Western brother matured into a full-throated arts heavyweight - boasting 10 clustered venues, thousands of soft seats and tens of thousands of satisfied patrons - the same way Utah hopes to break into the big time: by creating a downtown cultural district complete with a Broadway-size theater.
A typical weekend at the hip, hyped and happening Denver Performing Arts Complex, one of the nation's largest, helps show why Utahns are looking to their Colorado counterpart:
The Boettcher Concert Hall hums like a nightclub. Crowds line the lobby, sipping cocktails. Inside the Colorado Symphony's home, audience members tap their feet or wave their hands like a conductor to what is described as hot dogs with salsa - classical music meshed with Mexican mariachi.
Steps away, in the Broadway theater, Jean Valjean mesmerizes the well-heeled masses as he tries to escape Inspector Javert in what is touted as the last national tour of "Les Miserables." When the curtain falls, the fur-clad crowd files past a cabaret, where the college set mulls over a Second City political sendup.
Yes, choices abound: ballets, operas, symphonies, Broadway blockbusters, regional shows.
With more than 11,000 seats, Denver's complex stands next to a newly expanded convention center on Curtis Street and 14th. Only pedestrians are allowed on the 12-acre block. Parking is a snap at a 1,700-stall garage. Light rail is handy.
There also are three restaurants - one includes a lounge singer who wanders the room in a shimmery pink evening gown - along with a banquet hall, design studios for sets and costumes and theater schools (including the National Theatre Conservatory) for adults and children.
That's the kind of buzz the Beehive State covets. No, Salt Lake City won't ever be Denver, which has more money and more people. But armed with a study that recommends forming a downtown cultural district anchored by a new, 2,400-seat Broadway venue, Utah politicians and performers can learn much from their Rocky Mountain rival.
BROADWAY OR BUST?
Sure, Denver's cultural complex offers 10 city-owned theaters, but it's the Broadway venue - dubbed the Temple Hoyne Buell Theatre - that makes it sing.
And Utah should join the chorus, advises Rodney Smith, who just left as manager of Denver's complex and is now executive director of events at the private University of Denver.
"I can say to the people of Salt Lake - as we said during the latter part of the '80s [when planning the Buell] - 'If you build it, they will come,' " Smith says.
You see, Denver once was like Salt Lake City - low on the priority list for touring | |  | | | The 2,400-seat Schaumburg Performing Arts Center, near Chicago, gives an idea of what a Broadway theater could look like in Salt Lake City. Four SLC locations are being considered.
(Daniel P. Coffey & Associates)
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shows. The hits came, but as smaller productions and much later.
But, after building the Buell in 1991 from the shell of an arena that once showcased wrestling matches, Denver leaped to the A-list. Suddenly, it was Denver, not Los Angeles or Chicago, launching the national touring shows for Disney's "The Lion King" in 2002 and "Sunset Boulevard" in 1996.
The mega-hit "Wicked," which is passing over Salt Lake City in favor of Oklahoma City in 2007, is flying back to Denver next year, after a sold-out, three-week run in 2005.
Skeptics warned the Buell would be a bust. They figured it would snag one big show and then the curtain would fall on lasting success.
The city acknowledges there was a honeymoon. "The Phantom of the Opera" opened and just five seats in the 10-week-run went unsold.
But the theater's star power hasn't dimmed. In 2005, it ranked sixth in the nation for gross revenue and attendance in venues with up to 5,000 seats. That's down from the second spot it once held, but Buell still raked in $12.5 million and more than 252,000 visitors last year, according to Venues Today.
Holladay resident Derek Stephenson took his 7-year-old daughter, Alyssa, and his $600 to Denver to see "Les Miz."
"I wanted her to see it on a high-quality level," he says, while waiting for a flight back to Salt Lake City, where the tour isn't stopping.
Hoping to keep those patrons - and their pocketbooks - in Utah, John Ballard longs for a 2,400-seat theater downtown.
The president of the Salt Lake City office of Broadway Across America says the big shows skip Utah's capital because Capitol Theatre and the University of Utah's Kingsbury Hall lack the seats and dates producers demand.
"They want a large number of seats so they can make more money when they sell out," Ballard says. "Having more seats is critical to our future. We want to bring 'The Lion King' to Salt Lake City and other shows like 'Wicked.' "
The yellow-brick road is taking "Wicked" to Oklahoma City, whose theater has 500 more seats than Salt Lake City's. Ballard says that translates to $200,000 more for producers.
While "Wicked" is huge, the number of through-the-roof hits is slipping, concedes Randy Weeks, president of The Denver Center for the Performing Arts, which stages Broadway shows in the Buell. And subscriptions are down - parroting the post-9/11 trend nationally.
So does that mean Broadway is dying?
"It's a time of uncertainty," says Anthony Radich, executive director of the Denver-based Western States Arts Federation, which advances and preserves the arts in 12 states including Utah. "You've got to be willing to live through those peaks and valleys."
But Weeks insists Broadway remains a proven draw, even without blockbusters. Nationally, Broadway tours grossed $934 million in 2004-05, up from $714 million the previous year, according to The League | |  | | | The Donald R. Seawell Grand Ballroom in Denver hosts theater events, weddings, business meetings and fundraisers.
(John Prieto/The Associated Press)
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of American Theatres and Producers.
"Broadway continually reinvents itself," Weeks notes, and then quotes a character from 1975's "A Chorus Line": " 'Don't tell me Broadway's dead. I just got here.' "
BROADWAY PLAYS HERE?
Denver has more people (2.9 million in its primary market versus 1.9 million in Salt Lake City's), more money ($30,400 per capita income compared with $22,200) and more education (36 percent of adults have a bachelor's degree or more versus 28 percent). Those three factors help the arts flourish.
And Colorado's capital doesn't have LDS Church headquarters - a major provider of free cultural events, which cultivate a love of the arts but lessen demand for paid performances.
While the study shows potential for significant growth for classical music in Salt Lake City, it was unable to account for the free concerts provided by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and its symphony orchestra as well as the church's Concerts in the Park series, Bells on Temple Square and a whole host of LDS ward and stake shows.
But Denver's performing arts groups face plenty of competition from major museums and five big-league sports franchises - baseball, basketball, football, hockey and soccer. And here is something Salt Lake City and Denver share: stunning mountain scenery and residents' yen for the outdoors.
"Even more of a barrier than the price is time," Weeks says. "People say, 'What's your competition?' and I say, 'A sunny day.' "
HOW WOULD IT LOOK?
Even if Salt Lake County creates a cultural district with a Broadway theater, it won't look like Denver's.
Salt Lake City's downtown venues - Abravanel Hall, Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center and Capitol Theatre - already are spread over three blocks.
A Broadway theater could sprout near those venues. But Phil Jordan, who runs the performing arts venues for Salt Lake County, says the county would want more than a grand playhouse, striving to ensure liveliness during the day and the nights when the tours are out of town. The county would like smaller, multi-use spaces, along with a restaurant, retail and a school - perhaps for film. Maybe even housing.
"We're trying to dream outside the box," Jordan says.
Radich says it's a blessing Salt Lake City cannot build a massive, clustered complex like Denver's - which has been derided as mall-like. After all, dispersing theaters can help invigorate large swaths of downtown. In Pittsburgh, 14 cultural facilities fan out over 14 blocks and are flanked by stores, restaurants and galleries.
"We can't replicate [Denver] because we don't have a block that size where we could put that many facilities," says Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon, who has visited Denver's complex. "What impressed me most was the vibrancy of having those facilities close to each other and having everything going on at once."
So don't expect Corroon to bring Broadway to Sandy. That's because theater proximity pays. Patrons are drawn to a Broadway show and get hooked on Denver's downtown. The experience - easy parking, nearby dining, throngs of like-minded pedestrians - prompts them to return, perhaps for a different play at a different venue.
"I love it down here," says Jonathan Staton, attending a free Cinco de Mayo symphony performance with his wife and daughter. "There's a little bit of everything, stuff for everybody. There's musicals. There's opera. There's instrumental."
ECONOMIC BOOST?
Denver's theater district may be popular, but just outside of it there is not much life. Parking lots dot the landscape. Restaurants unassociated with the complex are blocks away. A redevelopment study labels the area the "backwaters of downtown" and calls for more housing, hotels and retail.
Hilliard Moore - who owns the Great Western Art Gallery, one of the few shops leading to the complex - tries to attract the theater crowd, displaying paintings of ballerinas interspersed with pictures of cowboys and outdoor scenes.
"Hopefully, they got the culture and they got the money, too."
Foot traffic is slow, but Moore says "this whole area is getting ready to go through a renaissance. If they build half the buildings they've got proposed, it's really going to change."
A couple of blocks away, bartender Melissa Bourllier says arts patrons account for 80 percent of Victory American Grill's bottom line, and the restaurant rewards them with a 15 percent discount. "There's really not anywhere [else] to dine."
Some credit the complex with helping transform Denver's downtown from being "dead and dangerous" - as Colorado Symphony CEO Doug Adams remembers it - to a place where new, one-bedroom condos fetch more than $500,000.
Others give the stadiums in sports-crazed Denver much of the credit. But complex managers point to the $40 million spent on tickets, restaurants and hotel rooms when "Phantom of the Opera" debuted or the $58 million from "The Lion King."
IS IT AFFORDABLE?
Estimates peg the cost of building a Salt Lake City Broadway theater at $60 million to $85 million, plus land. Salt Lake County hasn't pinned down how to pay for it. Clearly, it doesn't have the spigot Denver taps.
Salt Lake County has $17 million a year from the Zoo, Arts and Parks tax to help prop up arts and recreation groups, but seven Colorado counties provide $38 million to divvy among 300 science and cultural groups in those counties. That money didn't pay for the venues at the Denver Performing Arts Complex, but it provides a significant chunk to keep the arts groups going.
Then there is the $6 million to $8 million Denver extracts from a seat tax, a 10 percent surcharge on every ticket sold at city-owned facilities, which has helped build and maintain the theaters. The fund is flush
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not just from plays, but concerts held at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre and events at the Denver Coliseum.
Denver also boasts deeper donor pockets. A $150 million endowment helped jump-start the complex. Other endowments backed other venues. While Salt Lake City is home to a Delta Air Lines hub, Denver has two, Frontier and United, which help bankroll the arts.
Salt Lake County may impose a $1 ticket fee - raising $300,000 - to maintain and upgrade existing facilities. There also is talk of putting the money toward a new theater.
Other ways to pay for the theater include redevelopment money, a voter-backed bond and donations. And while Salt Lake City may lose out on building a soccer stadium, the taxes used to subsidize infrastructure around a Real Salt Lake venue in Sandy also could be used to build arts facilities downtown.
"There is the potential for something really dramatic to happen," says Salt Lake County Councilman Joe Hatch. "The big issue: Is there an appropriate funding mechanism for it?"
WHAT ABOUT THE EMPTY SEATS?
Almost 30 percent of the seats went unsold during the Utah Symphony's primary classical series last year and about 10 percent for Utah Opera. The venues are fuller than the year before, but the vacancies reflect a nationwide trend, says Anne Ewers, CEO of both groups.
"We need to find new and different ways of marketing and of getting people to embrace the uniqueness of live performance."
Ewers and others don't want to go head to head with national touring shows - something that doesn't happen now but could if a Broadway theater is built.
"If you schedule the Rockettes up against 'Aida' or the 'Nutcracker,' the Rockettes are going to win," Ewers says. "It can be an absolute blow to the arts organizations that exist here."
She says a new theater could work if resident art groups are protected - something Denver doesn't do.
"None of us have any problem with performing at the same time," says Adams, the Colorado Symphony's CEO. "I don't think it's competitive in any sense of the word."
Peter Russell, general director of Opera Colorado, agrees. "People that are inclined to go to Broadway musicals are going to go to Broadway musicals. Opera is probably not on the radar screen for people like that."
Part of the hang-up in Salt Lake City is that a Broadway theater would benefit Broadway Across America, a for-profit subsidiary of Live Nation.
Denver is different. The group that brings national shows is a nonprofit and is connected with Denver's professional theater company. So the moneymaking tours subsidize the works of the Denver Center Theatre Company. It would be like Utah's Broadway Across America financing Pioneer Theatre Company.
Still, if Utah's Broadway theater is marketed right - Denver's art groups share subscriber lists - resident art groups could benefit, say proponents.
"Look at what Tiger Woods did to the men's [golf] tour," says Weeks, in charge of Denver's Broadway shows and Denver Center Theatre Company. "Suddenly you found golfers working out during the off-season, losing the bellies. Tiger raised the bar and guess what? Other people have risen to it, and they're beating him. Maybe there's an analogy."
The man credited with creating Denver's arts complex encountered similar resistance.
Donald Seawell, then-publisher of The Denver Post, sketched out plans on the back of an envelope for the city's theater complex in 1972. But when he took the idea to the city, the mayor balked. The politician saw no need; legend has it only 3,000 people in the metro area were attending performances.
Today, the city says the theaters attract 1.1 million to 1.6 million visitors a year and they generate about $30 million in ticket sales, according to The Denver Post.
From his theaterlike office in the performing arts complex, Seawell, now 93, laughs away the naysayers.
"No performing arts center that I know of had the opposition I had," he recalls. "But now I can't find someone who will admit they opposed it. I think you'll find the same thing."
hmay@sltrib.com
Not seen in Salt Lake City
Broadway shows Denver has seen or will see and Salt Lake City won't:
"Wicked"
"The Lion King"
"Miss Saigon," original production
"Bombay Dreams"
"The Color Purple"
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