Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Creative thinking could save theater, help city


Clearly, an emergency requiring "Mayday!" calls for help has developed with an indispensable institution in the Wood River Valley—the nexStage Theater on Ketchum's Main Street.

Unless proper funds are raised within a month, the 12,000-square-foot building will be thrown onto the real estate market for sale and be destined for who knows what fate.

This can't be allowed to happen.

The theater literally has been the midwife to the birth of performing arts companies that enrich the valley's cultural life and, as nexStage manager and sometimes producer and director Kathy Wygle says, it is the soul of the community. The facility also has served as rental space for antique shows, social events, and meetings—space that will be scarce if the building disappears.

The city of Ketchum can and should come to the rescue with a little creative, out-of-the-box thinking to rescue the nexStage from an undeserved fate and at the same time to benefit City Hall's practical needs for space.

In a nutshell, the city could lease 5,000 square feet of storage and warehouse space belonging to the theater and transform it into an annex for City Hall and Police Department operations. With a lease in hand, the parent Sun Valley Performing Arts Center could secure a loan against lease revenues to buy the building for $1.5 million and continue operations.

Generous supporters have kicked in more than half of the needed purchase funds. Therefore, a lease by the city of Ketchum would virtually avoid any further talk of sale, while also bailing the city out of its growing space problems.

A city rescue also would help ensure that another functioning enterprise on Main Street wouldn't vanish.

Notwithstanding Ketchum Mayor Randy Hall's cryptic claims that several unnamed hotel developers are standing in the wings, Ketchum is taking on the look of a city in retreat. The Bald Mountain Lodge property is vacant because Ketchum City Council members declined to approve a five-story hotel. The former Williams Market is empty and looking for a buyer, a ghostly reminder of another business gone bad.

At some point, instead of instinctively saying "No" to projects, City Hall owes it to the future of the community to come out of its shell and find ways to say "Yes" to ideas that promote economic stability and preserve enterprises that are successful and needed for civic character.

Overnight, City Hall could create and staff an emergency committee to produce a quick study on city leasing of nexStage space and head off buyers whose designs on the property might fall short of the noble goals of the theater's cultural impresarios.




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