Two relatively new performing arts complexes in two small southern and eastern suburbs of Douglas County aren’t liable to lure the big touring Broadway shows away from the Denver Center for the Performing Arts any time soon. What’s more, neither the Parker Arts, Culture and Events Center nor the Lone Tree Arts Center is likely to match the DCPA’s ticket sales or budget.
But it only takes looking at the two center’s funding under the state’s Scientific and Cultural Facilities District to understand their rising cultural impact in the metro area. Approved by voters in 1988, the SCFD system awards money to cultural organizations in seven different counties based on annual revenue numbers. That money comes from a 0.1 percent sales and use tax.
“We’re considered a national model. Every month I get at least one call from somewhere else in the
country about
the SCFD.”
Both Lone Tree and PACE are applying for a bigger piece of the pie in the coming year.
“We could have applied last year, but it would have been closer to that threshold,” explains Elaine Mariner, the cultural director of the city of Parker. “We decided to not apply until we had a couple of years’ operations under our belt.”
Both Lone Tree and PACE are planning to make the shift from Tier 3 to Tier 2 organizations in the coming year. That’s a move from smaller to bigger in terms of funding. The Tier 3 category comprises hundreds of cultural groups across the seven-county metro area, whereas the Tier 2 includes less than 30.
The move will put the two facilities in a new bracket in one of the most unique cultural funding systems in the country. The massive reserve benefits organizations ranging from cultural juggernauts like the Denver Zoo to humble civic arts groups like the Aurora Symphony Orchestra.
“We’re considered a national model. Every month, I get at least one call from somewhere else in the country about the SCFD,” says Peg Long, executive director of the SCFD, adding that arts districts are more common nationwide than they were 10 years ago. “But no district is as large as ours. The geographic size of the district is the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined.
“It’s big,” she adds.
No kidding. The SCFD gives more than $40 million to nearly 300 groups across the metro area. It’s how that money is split up that makes all the difference for local arts and culture groups.
More than 65 percent of the SCFD budget goes to only five Denver-based organizations in the Tier 1 group. That includes the Denver Zoo, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the Denver Botanical Gardens, the Denver Art Museum and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, institutions with big budgets that draw crowds from across the state and the country. They get the lion’s share of the money, and the funding stream allows for free days and other discounts throughout the year.
But that leads to some stiff competition for the rest of the arts organizations vying for a limited amount of funds.
The Tier 2 group is much more diverse and includes a big chunk of the most notable and historic groups in and around Aurora. It covers the Wings Over the Rockies Museum in the Lowry neighborhood and the Mizel Museum right across the border in Denver. Aurora’s own Cultural Services Division — which funds the Aurora Fox theater, the Aurora History Museum, the Bicentennial Arts Center and a slew of other visual arts programs — is also in the same funding bracket. The Aurora division made the shift from Tier 3 to Tier 2 in 2003, when they finally met the funding and attendance requirements.
This year, the cutoff for Tier 2 organizations will be about $1.5 million in operating revenue. Paid attendance numbers also figure into the application: Tier 2 organizations are required to draw audiences from across the region.
“It’s critical, and yet it’s not,” explains Alice Lee Main, cultural services manager for the city. “We would survive without it, but there are programs that we’re able to do because of it. We would have to charge far more without it.”
That includes some of the city’s best-known cultural staples, including the shows at the Aurora Fox.
The Aurora Cultural Services Division and the other 26 groups in Tier 2 compete for the same pot of money — that’s 21 percent of the SCFD budget. In recent years, that’s boiled down to about $10 million for the whole Tier 2 category, a group that includes organizations like the Arvada Center and the Central City Opera. Those organizations have a much bigger budget than Aurora.
The Aurora Cultural Services Division’s slice of the pie has been around $200,000 in recent years.
Since Tier 2 members compete for a set amount of money, the addition of PACE and Lone Tree to the group could affect all of the other 27 organizations.
“It’s a natural progression to move from Tier 3 to Tier 2 as organizations serve more regional audiences,” Long explains. “As the number of organizations in that tier increase, those funds can be reduced. Fortunately, our tax revenue has continued to grow the past several years, so it has ameliorated that effect.”
Regional draw is key here. Since PACE and Lone Tree opened in 2011, they’ve both become a viable alternative for many theater fans and concert-goers outside of Denver.
For many suburbanites, the drive to one or both facilities is shorter and less stressful than the trek to downtown Denver. For some residents in the southeastern stretches of Aurora, they’re even closer than the city’s own cultural hub of theaters and galleries on East Colfax.
“We’re the cross-section of so many other local communities,” notes Lisa Rigsby Peterson, the executive director of the 43,000-square-foot venue just off I-25 and Lincoln Avenue. “It is an organization that citizens in the seven-county metro area feel they have access to and are welcome to.”
The viability of both stages is clear in the numbers. Both Lone Tree and Parker boasted a paid attendance of more than 37,000 audience members for their variety of plays, musicals and orchestral performances in 2013. Final figures are still pending, but both Parker and Lone Tree raked in operating revenues of more than $2 million last year. Both organizations would likely survive without the SCFD funding, but the absence would boil down to some fundamental changes. They wouldn’t be able to provide the same kind of access and free programming to audiences ranging from adults to school children.
That’s part of the reason both PACE and Lone Tree are eager for a new level of funding, money that’s hardly assured in the coming years. The SCFD tax, first passed in 1988, is up for renewal in 2016. In the past, voters have reapproved the district in high numbers (it passed by more than 60 percent in 2004).
But Long is measured and cautious when she talks about the vote in two years for the district.
“We fly under the radar screen most of the time, and then come before the voters when we ask for reauthorization,” she explains.
The key is conveying the true range of the program, she adds. It’s spreading the message that the district helps give culture lovers all over the metro area plenty of options that can rival the best that Denver has to offer.