Atlanta  Journal Constitution - July 16, 2006

 

Will the Atlanta Opera solve its problems by moving to Cobb?

By Pierre Ruhe

 

efore he decided to open a high-end Japanese restaurant in a generic strip mall in southern Cobb County last year, chef Tomohiro Naito considered Midtown ("too expensive to rent") and then an industrial area of Decatur (too much competition from established Chinese eateries).

"I heard this location [on Cobb Parkway] was very favorable," Naito says amid a recent noon-hour rush at Tomo, now touted as one of the best restaurants in metro Atlanta. The proximity to several mega-malls and affluent shoppers was an attraction, he said, and I-285 and I-75 are just around the corner. And there was also the new Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, under construction nearby in this booming part of the county.

"[I] thought about all the good clientele coming before and after shows," he says. "People who are educated and enjoy nice things know they have to pay for it."

The Atlanta Opera is betting its future that Naito is right. After a turbulent 27-year history, the opera company is moving to Cobb. Beginning in fall 2007, it will make the new arts center's 2,750-seat Williams Theatre its home.

The move is historic: It marks the first time a major-city opera company will leave its established location within a city and move all its performances to a suburb, according to Opera America, a service organization based in New York. And though metro Atlanta's reputation may be that of one large, sprawling landmass, for the opera, being in Cobb County could present an uncertain bundle of financial, sociological and political ramifications.

By moving from intown to the suburbs, is the opera, along with Naito's Tomo restaurant, leading a wave of sophisticated pleasures (exotic food, opera) that were once the domain of cities? Does it risk alienating its core audience and arts-hungry city dwellers who help make the city of Atlanta one of the fastest-growing urban areas in the country? Does it send a warning signal about Atlanta's lack of adequate venues?

Time will tell, but in the short term, the opera's decision is based on issues far more practical than philosophical.

For the past three seasons, the opera has performed at the city-owned Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center in Midtown. The 4,500-seat auditorium opened in 1968 and is often described as cavernous and charmless. It's the company's fourth home.

This past season, attendance — and, more importantly, fund-raising — slipped below what Atlanta Opera board President Greg Johnson calls "sustainable levels." Although single-ticket purchases remain steady, subscriptions hit a low of 4,400, or about half what they were at its previous home, the Fox Theatre, in 2002. Subscriber surveys and a Georgia Tech study suggested that patrons balked at the civic center itself.

Atlanta Opera general director Dennis Hanthorn puts the opera's situation in stark terms: "If we stay at the civic center, I don't know if we can continue to survive." Recently, the company announced drastic cutbacks. It will offer just three annual productions until its finances recover, down from its normal four shows a year. It will postpone a production of Handel's "Orlando," planned for the 2006-07 season at the civic center (and possibly give "Orlando" in Cobb in the 2008-09 season). And, to wipe out its $2.85 million debt, it will sell the Atlanta Opera Center, its office and rehearsal space on West Peachtree Street in Midtown.

Returning to the Fox, a popular movie palace that primarily hosts touring Broadway shows, is not feasible. The opera left there in the fall of 2004 for multiple reasons, primarily because theater management was unwilling to schedule its performance dates far enough in advance to allow the opera to hire singers and stage directors. (Hanthorn's recent remarks echo those of his predecessor, Alfred Kennedy, in 2002: "If we stay at the Fox, we'll die. It is not an option.")

For Hanthorn, the Cobb venue should be more hospitable for opera and the human voice. At his suggestion, for instance, the theater's orchestra pit was designed to hold 86 musicians, the minimum space needed for its core repertoire.

"We've looked at all the options," says Hanthorn, "and there aren't any left. The city of Atlanta hasn't stepped up to help. So we're in a situation where we've got a spectacular new theater in Cobb County, at an attractive [rental] price. We'd be irresponsible if we didn't take it seriously."

'A distance phobia'

But will enough of the opera's audience gladly follow to its new home, in an area of unincorporated Cobb between Smyrna and Vinings known as "Sminings"? And is leaving Midtown the right move at a time when Atlanta is experiencing a steady influx of new and returning residents to its central core? A recent University of Virginia study indicated that the city of Atlanta's affluence is growing faster than that of its suburbs: A decade ago the per capita income in the city was below the metropolitan average; now it's 28 percent higher, the fastest urban-wealth shift in the country.

Yet opera officials are banking that the move will work, basing their optimism on demographics that show a slim majority of their audience and supporters live closer to the Cobb Energy Centre than to the civic center. Numbers supplied by Atlanta Opera marketing director Matt Basta show:

•52 percent of current and lapsed subscribers and all single-ticket buyers from the past 24 months live closer to the Cobb center.

•68 percent of all donors who have given $1,000 or more in the past two years live closer.

•Just over half the members of its board of directors are closer.

Basta says these figures, calculated by plugging subscriber and donor addresses into a mapping Web site, are not conclusive. But they also indicate that the intown numbers for the opera are sizable, as patrons from all the northern suburbs plus the well-heeled Buckhead and Vinings neighborhoods amount to just over half the opera's audience. Across the 2005-06 season, the opera sold 29,000 tickets, down from a peak of 44,000 in 2003.

Hanthorn says that for intown patrons, the company is positioning its move primarily as "a distance phobia to overcome." But he admits it hasn't examined any potential psychological obstacles. For instance, will the Williams Theatre and adjoining 10,000-square-foot ballroom seem classy enough for the champagne-sipping black-tie crowd? (The Fox scores big on this intangible; the civic center does not.)

Nevertheless, board President Johnson looks ahead to the day when the Cobb Energy Centre is seen as a steppingstone toward an expanded "arts corridor," stretching northward from Midtown's Fox and Woodruff Arts Center to Buckhead's Chastain Park, then on to the Cobb center and, to the east, to a planned outdoor amphitheater owned by the ASO called Encore Park.

'A landmark'

Despite aggravating facts of suburban life such as sprawl and traffic, that vision appears to be supported by national census data, which show that five times as many people are moving into suburbs as into cities. Indeed, many social planners and academics see the return to city living by the affluent — a trend often cited by city leaders as proof of a renaissance — as merely a "niche lifestyle."

"Many cities, like Atlanta, are banking [on] their reputations as culture and entertainment centers, but that's probably a short-term mirage," says Joel Kotkin, author of "The City: A Global History" and a fellow at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan Washington think tank.

"I see it all over [the country]: Political and business leaders tout their city as a 'cool' place to be and hope to lure the creative class, including bohemians, young professionals, childless couples and gays," he says. "In many cases they've succeeded in reviving portions of their once-desolate town centers, but it's hardly with anything reminiscent of their past economic or social vitality."

Thus, Kotkin calls the new Cobb Energy Centre, and the Atlanta Opera's move there, a "landmark, the next level in the evolution of the suburbs.

"It may prove that Atlanta is evolving at a faster rate than Chicago or L.A. or other older cities that had similar room for unchecked sprawl," he says. In the evolution of suburbs, "you can't re-engineer the disbursement, but slowly you can make life more livable. That's where arts centers help. My own study of history is that the arts follow society, [going] where there are consumers and patrons."

Once these kinds of centers open, he adds, "there's a lot of community buy-in. It makes sense for suburban parents who are interested in the arts, and have kids who want to learn the arts — classical music and dance — that these places are what's accessible."

Hanthorn and the opera also see education as a key factor in winning patrons in Cobb. For synergy and cost savings, he has proposed sharing an education director with the Cobb center. The opera hopes to form a link with Cobb County — just as the opera currently hosts city of Atlanta students at the civic center. Details will be hammered out with Cobb center managing director Michael Taormina, recently hired away from Houston's Hobby Center for the Performing Arts. (See related story at left.)

Supporting opera

Shelton Jones and his wife live in Decatur, but when their daughter departs for college in two years, they plan to move to Midtown. "Soon we won't need a [roomy] house and a yard," says Jones, a financial analyst for the Army. "Why should we live six miles from downtown when we want to walk to the restaurants we like, the High Museum and the opera?"

Realtors call it the "live-work-play" lifestyle, and for many people in Atlanta, it's centered on the Midtown scene, which offers a wealth of fashionable food, clubs and the arts. Atlanta Symphony Orchestra President Allison Vulgamore tries to sell the lifestyle, too, building enthusiasm for the orchestra's planned Symphony Center, designed by architect Santiago Calatrava, as a beacon for the "play" component of that trinity.

Last month, when the opera's pending move to Cobb was officially announced, Jones felt a pang of conflict, then resignation: "I'm torn between wanting the cultural amenities of living intown and not having to drive everywhere, and the fact that the opera really needs a better venue."

Hal Smith and his partner live in Bartow County and attend the opera regularly. Disappointed with the quality of opera at the civic center, they canceled their season subscriptions two years ago, but had planned to join again if standards improved. But Smith says he's "concerned" about the opera's move.

"Cobb County doesn't have the most admirable reputation of welcoming diversity," he says, recalling political controversies that drew national attention, including anti-gay legislation that prompted the 1996 Summer Olympics to relocate several events and the recent debate over teaching evolution in the public schools.

"The gay community of Atlanta has given great support to all the arts — and especially the opera," he says. The 2000 census shows metro Atlanta has the largest number of gays and lesbians of any community in the Southeast and the ninth-largest concentration of same-sex households in the nation, says Sean Cahill, who studies demographics for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in New York.

Opera management, Smith suggests, "has a selling job in terms of getting [intown] Atlantans to drive farther — and it may just be my own paranoia, [but also in] letting everyone know they will be welcomed. Perhaps Cobb County needs to do some selling, too."

Cobb County Commissioner Sam Olens, who's led the effort to open the arts center, responds by saying, "I feel Cobb County is very welcoming of the arts.

"When the opera announced they were moving to Cobb, they received just a few negative e-mails," Olens says. Referring to the political controversies, he adds, "One should listen to the business owners and civic leaders and everyday people — and not to a few isolated politicians."

For his part, Cobb Energy Centre director Taormina (who plans to live in Midtown) says the arts center's mission and programming will "speak to the broadest audience, to as diverse an audience as possible. Outreach is a top priority, and every bit of it will be inclusionary."

Asked about some opera fans' perception of the county, Hanthorn, a Cobb resident, responds, "I hadn't thought about it, to be honest."

Then he quickly adds: "I think of Atlanta, the whole metro area, as international and multicultural. I hope everyone feels welcome wherever we perform. We're about opera for everyone, that's the bottom line."

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