NZ HERALD: Monday Mar 10, 2008. By Brian Rudman
Auckland City's interest in buying the imperilled St James Theatre emerges in a tender document recently sent out to a select group of arts consultants. The city is commissioning a comprehensive study of future CBD venue needs, and has given seven potential consultants until next Monday to bid for the task.
The council wants the survey to specifically look at "potential functional uses and market demand for refurbishing the St James", noting the redevelopment plans for "the Regent/Westend/Odeon/St James Theatre block and the prospect that council may within the next five years be invited to purchase the St James Theatre".
The report will not just look into the need and market demand for professional performing arts venues in Auckland City, but will also have to deliver a strategic action plan to guide and prioritise the future provision and investment in performing arts venues.
The study arises from last month's hearings into the future of the Q Theatre project - the proposed 350-460 seat flexible stage space behind the Town Hall which has failed to emerge from the drawing boards despite 10 years of good intentions. In recent years its estimated cost has blown out from $9.3 million to $21 million.
A little flexi-experimental theatre was identified in a 1997 Deloitte's study into Auckland venue needs as the city's most pressing new theatre requirement. But since then, the overall scene has changed for the worse. The future of the CBD's two main drama theatres - the Maidment and SkyCity - have question marks hanging over them.
At the Q Theatre hearing, the big professional performing arts groups pressed the urgent need for a new review of theatre needs. Without actually bagging the Q Theatre project, they argued that along with a flexi-theatre, the city also needed a 550-seat drama theatre and a 1200-seat multi-purpose venue for theatre and opera.
Many in the performing arts scene agreed with the Auckland Theatre Company's submission questioning the making of a "substantial" contribution to a project "which is only a partial solution to the city's venue requirements".
As always in the cash-strapped arts sector, it's the old debate of taking the bird in the hand versus dreaming of catching the flock in the bush.
With commendable haste, the city has set about conducting the requested review. The briefing document, from Liz Civil, manager of arts policy, also wants the successful consultant to examine "the desirability of council continuing to support the Q Theatre project ... and whether this proposal still reflects the most pressing need".
Rather ominously the report calls for the proposed new venues that could be achieved in the next 10 to 15 years to be listed "in an order of priority", with a "clear direction for council as to which venue should be given first priority given that it is likely that only one venue will be funded at this time".
One of the organisations campaigning for just such a review has been the Aotea Centre's board of management, which noted "the very real shortage of venues in the Auckland CBD" in its submission to the Q Theatre hearings. The Edge's chief executive, Greg Innes, is pleased arts organisations like his have been heard. However he hopes for an improvement in the proposed management structure of the review process, concerned that channelling the whole process through a consultant could end up with yet another report left to gather dust on a shelf. With lack of funding a continuing crisis, he says it is important that representatives of the various arts groups be involved in the report preparation proceedings, especially in the priority-setting stages. He suggests that discussions should be chaired by a trusted high profile arts leader.
Rather optimistically, he talks of such inclusiveness leading to consensus, but it seems obvious that such a process is more likely to achieve a better level of appreciation of each other's needs, and a higher level of buy in, than leaving the decision-making to the tender mercies of one consultant.
Of course in this year of the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance, it seems short-sighted that the document makes no reference to the possibility that hopefully sooner rather than later in the 10 to 15 year timescale identified, funding for major theatre venues and for performing arts groups will become a regional responsibility, not just the lot of Auckland City ratepayers. Then again, that really is dreaming of birds in the bush.
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