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The Berkeley City Council can rightly be applauded for the effort it has made to help fund the expansion of some local arts groups seeking to locate new facilities downtown to develop their audiences.  

But when the bulk of city arts funding is limited to only a few single occupant buildings that cannot be shared with other arts groups, an alternative downtown site is sorely needed to ensure that equal opportunities for audience development are available for all of Berkeley’s deserving arts organizations. 

Berkeley, so often called the Athens of the West, has an opportunity to prove itself worthy of such hyperbole when the City Council meets to consider a proposal advanced by the Planning Commission that will do little for arts groups currently shut out of downtown for lack of space. An alternative plan, rejected by the commission, would include; a civic art gallery, a 420-seat theater, a 100-seat theater, a smaller rehearsal/performance space and a cabaret café on the ground floor of the new David Brower building currently under review for construction on the Oxford street parking lot at Allston Way. 

Hopefully, the City Council will not accept the Planning Commission’s shortsighted recommendation without further study. 

As currently recommended by the Planning Commission, the Brower building would not include the proposed 420-seat theater required to help finance the arts center’s operations through membership fees and ticket sales. Instead the commission recommends only a token gesture toward solving the city’s arts space crisis by proposing a woefully inadequate 100-seat stage space and an exhibition gallery only.  

Other recommendations for the building’s other floors include; office space for environmental groups, market-rate and low-income housing, two levels of underground parking and commercial retail space. These can all co-exist easily with an arts center anchored by a 420-seat theater by raising the planning commission’s building height recommendation by only two floors. 

At issue is an opportunity to address the serious lack of downtown arts facilities desperately needed by a growing number of local arts organizations by developing an exciting center for the arts that will present and produce arts events from across the disciplines. The Planning Commission’s disappointing low ball proposal for a 100-seat theater effectively restricts audience development opportunities downtown to only those few private non-profits on Addison Street’s so called ‘Arts District.’ This is unfair to organizations that cannot accommodate their growing audiences in a 100-seat venue and places undue hardships on arts organizations forced to pay production fees and advertising costs for four times as many performances to accommodate the same number of patrons that could otherwise be served in a larger facility. 

The Planning Commission’s proposal for a five story building limit doesn’t make sense for other reasons as well. Green buildings need sun. A five-story Brower building will be forever in the shadow of the two adjacent buildings; the California movie theater and the Gaia building. The City Council can seize an exciting opportunity to make a significant cultural contribution to the city by moving to amend the Planning Commission recommendation allowing for a slightly taller building to make the art center possible. At seven floors the building will still be lower than the two nearest neighboring structures. 

To finance a wide range of arts events, a downtown art center must be large enough to enable non-profit arts groups to match grants with earned income through box office admissions. A small exhibition and theater space limited to 100 seats will be hard pressed to cover operational costs without a larger anchor facility from which to draw audiences and raise funds. By thinning the mix with its recommendation for a 100-seat theater, the Planning Commission dooms the theater to an impossibly small earned income capacity making it dependent on corporate support and/or city funds to survive. And without a larger facility in which to grow the viability of a stand alone 100-seat theater is bleak indeed. To make such a recommendation without a management study showing how such a facility would cover its operating costs could actually jeopardize more credible strategies for developing a 100-seat theater option as part of a larger arts center complex. 

By anchoring the art center with a 420-seat theater, however, many things become fiscally feasible. The Berkeley Art Center, now housed in Live Oak Park and eager to expand downtown, and a proposed cabaret café intended to serve serious Jazz aficionados and other musical enthusiasts, will develop audiences by leveraging other events taking place in the larger venues through joint marketing efforts. Those efforts will increase each group’s income and reduce costs through cooperative programming synergy.  

One central event calendar can replace six organizational newsletters and special discounts for different performances or exhibitions taking place throughout the arts center encourages audiences to attend art events they might not otherwise consider; like attending a series of solo performances in the smaller 100-seat theater.  

Listing just a few of the many local arts organizations, performing ensembles, and virtuoso soloists in need of a downtown facility to further develop their audiences would include: the Berkeley Art Center, the Berkeley Arts Festival, Central Works, George Coates Performance Works, Mal Sharpes’ Jazz Band, The Berkeley Opera, Nightletter Theater, Beanbenders, The Paul Dresher Ensemble, movement master Leonard Pitt, Berkeley Filmmakers, Brookside Actors Repertory Theater, The Jewish Music Festival, Berkeley City Ballet, Berkeley Chamber Arts and numerous others that would benefit. Visiting touring groups from other cities would round out an exciting mix of offerings helping to make downtown Berkeley a destination for local residents and visitors throughout the year. 

By raising the Brower building height limit recommendation by only two floors the City Council has an opportunity to show that it values its citizens ahead of its bureaucracy while at the same time helping to insure that city supported cultural equity is not something reserved for an exclusive trust of downtown establishments.  

George Coates is the artistic director of George Coates Performance Works