Losses mount at Burnsville Arts Center

The Burnsville Performing Arts Center has been billed as a regional attraction crucial to the success of the city's downtown redevelopment. But four months in, it had already lost more money than had been expected for the entire year.

Now, the city is looking for answers from the company hired to run it.

Numbers supplied by the city show that the center, which opened in late January, had lost $277,000 through the end of April. City Council Member Dan Kealey said he sees that and shudders to think that the center could be looking at a deficit of over $1 million by the end of the year.

The budget had called for a shortfall of $266,000 for the first year of the $20 million, publicly financed center.

"The entire City Council is concerned," said Council Member Mary Sherry.

The company that runs the center, meanwhile, insists that it's still early and that the situation will improve, and officials are calling for patience as the center weathers start-up costs and a tough economy that nobody envisioned when the city moved ahead with the PAC.

Steve Peters, president of Iowa-based management firm VenuWorks, met with Burnsville City Manager Craig Ebeling on Tuesday to discuss the center. "I think things are going very well," Peters said after the meeting. "With more good things to come."

"There are a lot of mitigating factors to that," Peters said. "Certainly start-up expenses are one-time expenses that get counted into that."

Peters said it is a mistake to take numbers from the beginning of the year and assume they are indicative of what will transpire the rest of the year.

"A loss of over $1 million is not going to happen," he said. "There are anomalies in the first year that won't be there after this. This is something we are going to get past quickly."

The center, built with public funds after plans for a private developer fell through, has been seen by proponents as a major draw for the Heart of the City near Nicollet Avenue and Burnsville Parkway, conceived as a bustling, pedestrian-friendly downtown for the suburb of about 60,000. But it has been politically divisive. Critics have said it shouldn't have been built with public funds, although the city says it did not have to raise taxes, instead using landfill revenue and other funding sources.

Still, opponents have been vocal, and mayoral challenger Jerry Willenburg made criticism of the PAC a big part of his platform in November. Six-term Mayor Elizabeth Kautz prevailed in the general election 54 to 46 percent after Willenburg nearly matched her in the primary.

"We're going to compile attendance figures that show we pretty much hit the mark there," he said. "Certainly the economy has played a role. When you build a building like this you don't expect to walk across the bridge into an economic firestorm."

A June 5 show featuring country music legend George Jones was canceled at the last minute, with the Nashville-based promoter not providing a reason. Peters said on Tuesday he assumed it was because of lack of ticket sales.

"We have lost money promoting that particular show in another market," he said, adding that a desire to be outside during the summer probably has an effect on ticket sales.

Larson, who was at Tuesday's meeting, continues to ask people to simply give the PAC time.

"This is not a disaster," he said. "In the long term it will be successful, and in a few years people wouldn't imagine living in a place like this without the Performing Arts Center."