750. What other uses will that space be having? Or is that dedicated to the museum? It's dedicated to the museum. So there won't be any other use? No other uses. The second floor area in the new building is dedicated to the museum, with the exception of the mechanical space that serves the entire building. But you're correct. That green space is dedicated to the museum. And I'll ask my curator question to the consultant. Thank you. All right. Council Member Lane. Good morning. Good morning. My question had to do with the zoning on the property. Could you go into the zoning category of that, please? In terms of, sorry, I don't remember exactly what the zoning, is it B2 area? I do know that there's a zero setback on the property. Okay. Well, the reason I was asking is that under the zoning ordinance, you're required to have a certain number of on-site parking provided. And I was wondering how we were going to get that on there and still comply with the zoning ordinance. Yes. I always do that. I apologize. I've been in communication with the law department and Dewey Crow about the actual requirements for parking. And the space, I passed around the sheet. Did everybody receive a copy? Directly north of the Lyric on the corner of Elm Tree and 3rd Street is about 10,000 square feet of space that could be converted into parking spots. anywhere up to 30 spaces depending on the layout and the There's a certain square or certain distance from the lyric that would qualify and I believe that lot would qualify We can get more information from Dewey about what the ordinance says But it has to be within a certain proximity to the theater, but not necessarily on the exact footprint Well, if we had a private developer who was bringing a property in for development in Fayette County, would we not require that they would meet the zoning ordinance as far as parking and, you know, land use ratios, et cetera? And, I mean, I looked this up, and based on my interpretation of the ordinance, that we would have to provide about 145 to 150 parking spaces on site, to meet the current zoning ordinance for that parcel. I believe the law department's opinion is it's 33 spaces. Have you received a memo from Logan Askew on that? No, but what the ordinance says is that for, you know, you have to have a parking space for each five seats in a theater. And there's 500 plus seats in there. It's like there's about 550. That would be 110 just for the theater itself. and then for the other portions of the building, the museum and the meeting facility, I believe the ratio is one parking space for every 400 square feet. I'm not an expert on zoning law and I'm not going to pretend to be the law department. Logan specifically communicated with Dewey about what the requirements would be for the various usages. The theater space would require so many, the museum and the multipurpose space. And the number they calculated based on the ordinance was a minimum of 33 spaces. The ordinance gives kind of an either-or. You have to do this many or a lesser amount based on – I shouldn't even try to act like I'm an expert on zoning law because I'm not doing a very good job. But I'd be happy to get a copy of that memo from Logan. I think it was directed to Council Member Martin. I'm not sure if it's been distributed yet or not. But the answer we received from the law department was 33 spots. Well, the reason I'm bringing this up is because if we put a facility here, I think we want it to be very successful. Yes. And as you know, I've been in commercial real estate for a number of years. I worked for two corporations and acquired sites for commercial use. And parking is absolutely critical. And I would just, I would be very, very concerned that if we develop the 29,000 square feet and put the theater in, that there would be inadequate parking available. Third Street is a two-lane street. There's not on-site parking there. And the other aspect of it is that the cost of any other parking has not been put into the budget. So if we were going to add 100 parking spaces, 150, whatever the requirement is, we'd have to budget for that. Now, I would suggest that if we're going to build this big of a development, I would recommend that we buy the land and add the additional parking because to put this much money into an arts facility and it not be successful would be a concern to me. And if you all would like to authorize more spending to buy more parking, I don't think we would object to that. And I think we do just need to understand clearly what the requirement would be, because you think it's 100, and I was told it was 33. I think the space immediately north of the Lyric would accommodate up to 30 spaces. There's a few spaces, two or three, I apologize, I didn't hear specifically what Susan said, that would meet our zoning requirements. requirements. What Dewey also said was the spots have to be available when the facility, when the specific purpose is in use. So there are more spots west on Elm Tree over where the clinic is. There's a plat right there that we own. We could have a lease agreement. They probably have a lease agreement with us right now to even use that spot during the daytime, at nighttime, all those spots could count into the usage for the theater. I think we can make it work. Now, I'm not going to stand up here and say there's 500 parking spots right in those two lots, but this past weekend I went to the Opera House to see Mama Mia. It was a wonderful evening. I enjoyed it very much, but throughout the entire evening I was thinking about the Lyric Theater, and more specifically where I parked and where everyone else parked when we all left. And what I noticed, obviously there's a parking structure at Victorian Square that's very convenient, but I parked in a lot that was several blocks away, not well lit, far back. I watched where everyone else was walking. They were walking down alleys, streets, all over the place to accommodate parking. But the reason I feel like people are doing it is because they're familiar with the area. They know where the parking is. and there's more businesses and so forth around. If you look at the map, just within a block or two, there are many parking spaces. There's businesses that could allow us to use their spaces at night, either for free or to charge. There's churches moving west of the Lyric towards town. I feel that there would be enough parking spots to accommodate the usage of the Lyric Theater but our challenge is making that perception of no parking no longer the perceived reality. I think it has worked at the Opera House by people parking in various lots two or three blocks away. Same thing that would happen with Lyric Theater. I don't think it's impossible, and I don't think it's a reason not to move forward. But I do agree we have to take it seriously. Well, my thought is that if you're going to put $6 million into the facility and we don't have adequate parking, that's a serious problem, and the facility will not be successful. And if you look at other theaters, not necessarily performing arts, but movie theaters, anywhere else in the city they all have adequate parking for the people coming there. and if you have inclement weather or cold weather, those are other issues. When you're downtown, the zoning is different. That's B2P zoning downtown. Plus we do have the walkways at Interlink so you can park in various parking garages and basically get within a half block or a block of the Opera House or the Rupp Arena or whatever. That's all I wanted to add. I just feel that parking is critical, and if we're going to spend the money, we need to make sure it's successful. I agree with that. Thank you. Council Member Gordon, Council Member James, and Council Member Myers. Well, I was going to ask parking questions specifically about cost and things. And I know that when the Friends of the Dog Park raised private money to build the Masterson Station Dog Park, we also raised private money to put in parking spaces in a public park. And it was $10,000 a space. And that was a few years ago. And so my first comment is I hope we'll look to the private, you know, the supporters to give a little. And my second comment is I hope if we put in parking in those two lots it will be pervious parking to go along with our new stormwater, the consent decree, and we could be, and we example for downtown if we would not build a traditional parking lot. If we go that route and that ends up to be parking lots. I think we need to think outside the box in terms of raising a little money and how we build the parking lot. I think we would be supportive of that as well. That's more James. Yes, just to clarify, the UK spots are already, they're already existing spots. So If folks were thinking we would have to create a brand-new parking lot, those are already spots that after 4.30 or 5 are vacant for the rest of the evening. And I don't know if it's 75 to 100 spots there. I'm not sure how many are there for that health clinic. But it's really interesting when you talk about the concept of parking in an urban setting, and this is something that through the East End Small Area Plan and the Central Sector Small Area Plan we've been dealing with substantially because as we want that area to economically thrive the way that it used to, in the past, the developments have only been geared towards the people that live there. And as we learned in the parks master plan, that that area has the lowest car ownership of anywhere in Lexington, that those people use bikes, the people that live in that area use bikes, public transit, and walk, probably more as far as percentage-wise more than anybody else in Lexington. So when you look at where the area is, you have to be creative, and you have to, as we do in the downtown area with downtown business districts, there's a different type of zoning that's required to allow for parking. The consultant for the Central Sector Small Area Plan suggested, and the lyric was across the street from where she was looking, But she suggested that we have different zoning, different zones for areas where we know that we're limited for things. So we already know, and we hear the complaints, and I'm sure building inspection hears it too, if someone wants to develop along limestone, for example, all of the new things that are happening there, there's no way that a facility along limestone building should have the same parking requirements is somewhere like Hamburg or somewhere in the outskirts of town where there's plenty of land to put parking. So we've got to be creative and not necessarily look at parking equivalencies the same as other areas. As it currently stands, I don't know for sure with the current zoning. However, I would recommend if we see that as a barrier that we try to look at creative things like tying in what we pay our taxes for, which is the public transit, and connecting public transit to certain garages that are urban county government-owned garages and have shuttles, the trolley maybe even, that runs from the shuttles, runs from the parking structures to that facility, which gives us that energy and vibrancy. I talked a little bit about this at the last meeting, but it looks like Council Member Lane is still having some concerns about the parking. But we've got to show that connectivity. And as long as we think that everything will be standalone, we are not going to be able to thrive economically. So I do ask for the committee members to really consider the lyric in conjunction with going downtown to Portofino's to go eat or going downtown somewhere else to go eat and walking and creating a corridor, not keeping it in this isolated area that has always been neglected. We've got to show that connectivity to other things that are thriving, if we think that that space should have everything on its own, we're never going to get to the point where we're creating the energy in our community that, I think this creative and progressive planning is supposed to gear us towards. So that's just my comment that we need to be creative. If we need to look at an overlay to change the parking, let's do that. But let's not let that be the barrier when we know that we have the ability to do those ZOTAs to get those things revised. Thank you. Councilman Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Jay, if you could come up just for a second. And I was really going to start out asking questions about the Opera House and how much parking it has. And so you really kind of sealed everything that I wanted to talk about. But, you know, when you look at this opportunity here, that's really what it is, is an opportunity to change a whole lot of things in one area of town that will make it much more attractable and attractive for people to come and play and raise their families and things like that. But when you look at the Opera House, there are, what, maybe 10 parking places out front that really don't get used for parking? I'm not an expert on the Opera House. I'm not sure if there's any. There's a few spots, yes, on Short Street, and I don't know what they're used for during performances. Handicap, okay. Yes, they're handicapped. And there's a drop-off space. street parking, then there's the Victorian Square Garage, which is used by everybody downtown, and then there's several surface lots not dedicated specifically for the Opera House only, but that evening, we've all experienced it, you know, they have the pay here, park here for $5 with somebody standing there, and that's what I personally utilized. Okay. I know that the Mayor's Office has talked about building parking garages in different locations downtown and the parking study has been done. When that parking study was done, did it include those kind of pay here, park here, different organizations or buildings that are there that have vacant lots or after hours that people have paid for parking? Was that included in how many parking places we have downtown when we looked at building new structures? Are you talking about a parking study that was done by the parking authority? Right. I don't know what the conclusions were. We'd have to get Gary Means. I mean, I can certainly find that information out for you. Okay. I'd just be curious to know if we know how many of those type parking lots or vacant lots that are in and around this area that can be utilized for parking that would be utilized for parking and economic development. You're talking specifically around the Lyric? Yes. Okay. And then the rest of my comments are really just that it's really about opportunity and it's really about providing an opportunity for people to go that they're excited about and they're willing to walk. I know that part of that parking study, I remember Phil Hollaback talked about, they actually did a study that showed how far of a distance people will walk to go to retail places downtown, what they're willing to walk to see. But when you look at Rupp Arena, for example, and you've got students walking from the far end of campus all the way over there to watch a basketball game, and we can look at that all over the city there are different opportunities for people to go view things or see things where the parking is not right there on site but people still go and so the comment was made about movie theaters movie theaters are normally in a mall type setting another difference between a movie theater and a facility like this is that movie theaters show movies seven days a week and they show multiple movies every day of the week and so there's no way that you could have a movie theater stuck somewhere where you don't have parking, except for something like the Kentucky Theater, but it's a little bit different venue. I just encourage everybody on this council to look at this as an opportunity to grow and increase our city. You know, when we go on these chamber trips, we go around the country, and we look at what they're doing downtown, no one suggests when we go to another city that you knock down buildings to build a parking place to get people to come to a venue. They look at the downtown, they look at the beautiful buildings that they have and the historic preservation and all those different things, and they say, okay, we've got challenges with parking, but yet we want to grow our neighborhood, we want to grow our community, we want to have access to things that draw people here and keep people here, and so we make do. That's not to suggest that we act irresponsibly and build something in a way that there isn't parking for, but it's clear that there's parking here and that there's enough parking to manage this process and what we want to do in this building. So I would encourage people to, rather than continue to look for reasons why not to do this project, look for whatever challenges that are existing, but look for opportunities to fix those challenges and move forward. Thank you. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Chair. One is somewhat of a tongue-in-cheek comment. I wonder how much parking was available at that site in the 50s when they were having these headliners come in. I'm sure no more than the same two that exist today. has anybody done a compilation, I guess, of what the peak occupancy would be at any given time? If there are multiple things going on, we talk about a museum space and we talk about community programming of some sort and we talk about the theater, but are all those happening simultaneously? or can we just assume that the theater in and of itself would be by itself at the time that it would be utilized? My answer to that would be it all depends on the programming we end up offering at any given time. I think sometimes we could be utilizing all three, and sometimes we may make a decision when the theater is being utilized, you can't have a separate function going on in the multipurpose space or in the museum. Perhaps there could be a performance where there could be overflow, reception activity going on in the multipurpose room or in the museum, but the number of seats in the theater, I believe, is around 550. So I don't anticipate having more than 550 people at any given time. And I think that's a programming question. and some of the other experts in the room could correct me. I think just whoever's operating the facility will have to make a determination on how much we can hold at one given time. I kind of sense that probably the peak is going to be the occupancy of the theater in and of itself. That's what I would imagine. In other times of mornings and afternoons, it would be a different story. Correct. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Okay, in recognition of the time, does anyone have any questions for the architect? I know she has to go. And we can get back to Shea and the parking issue here a little bit later. So if there's a question for Shea, can you hold them? But if you have a question for the architect, Mr. Blues. Quick question, and that is in the comparisons to some of the other venues, other venues which would be similar in nature to the to the lyric was parking a a part of those comparisons in other words in places like the Morton theater in in Athens Georgia King Arts complex in Columbus whether there was you know is is there is there nearby parking or Or are those venues faced with some of the same difficulties? I'm sure that Arthur can probably address that specifically. Okay. We had not talked about it. We had spoken with some of the other facilities in our regional area that we went to visit, and one example certainly is the U.K. Art Museum, which does not have on-site parking but uses the parking across the street primarily or across the field at the student center, that that's really for the Singletary and the Center and the Art Museum, that that's when visitors come, that they're not parking adjacent to the building on site, but they're utilizing parking lots that are being used during other times of the day for other venues. Thank you. Any other questions for the architect? Well, if we do, I'm sure you'll be glad to come back if we do at a future meeting, but thank you for being here. We appreciate it. Thank you. Next, in accordance with our time, if Ms. Peterson would mind just coming up and giving us kind of a brief overview of the task force and your work that you've done to this point. And then we'll have Mr. Greenberg come up from AMS and speak about the actual business plan that was presented to Council a couple weeks ago. But if we could hold our questions for both of them until the end, after both of them have had a chance to present to Council, That way we can get their presentations in, and then we can have all of our questions. Chair, if you don't mind, I just want to make sure everyone up there has a copy of Juanita's bio. There might be some extra copies in front of Jerry. Many of you know Juanita already. Some of you may not know of all of her accomplishments and involvement. The front page gives kind of a summary, but the back there's some specific things she's been involved with in the arts. Obviously, she's a citizen member of the task force, but also an arts professional, in my opinion. My favorite part, though, I will have to say, is that she and her husband were recognized as leaders in education and the arts by the Lane Report several years ago. Thank you, Mr. Lane. Just for your information. Thank you. Welcome, Ms. Peterson. Thank you. Thank you for coming once again. Our apologies for not being able to hear your discussion last week. That's okay. I hope you have a few minutes just to listen. If there are some of the task force members in the audience, I'd like to introduce them. Would you stand please? And each of them is a committee chair. This is Freda Merriweather, who's co-chair of the Programming Committee, and Mr. Bill Scott over the Building Committee, and Ms. Annis. Oh, there she is. We have Joan Brannon in the back who is also Chair and Co-Chair of the Programming and Artifacts Committee, Museum Artifacts, and Ms. Anissa Franklin who is over our Communications Committee. So thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you this morning, and if you don't mind, I will try to go through this and then you can ask me questions because this is a heartfelt presentation, I want to get the facts straight before we begin with my heart, gut, and have a feeling. The task force members had a stated mission, and our mission was, and still is, to bring forth an exciting redevelopment plan that respects and reflects the theater's rich African-American cultural heritage. while providing a slate of sustainable new opportunities for community use of the facility that complies with the governing state agreement. That's our job. Oh, by the way, I did want to add to my resume that I was a member of the Martin Luther King Holiday Committee and a founder, which I'm very proud of, of the Arts and Culture Day for the YMCA Black Achievers Program, which I had to work hard to get, just like I'm working hard or we are working hard to get this project going. Our mission has been guided by monthly task meetings, public forums, open house events, technical studies and reports, site visits, facility consults, newspaper articles and editorials. We've continued to remain focused, committed and energized throughout this process. We have four task force committees, which I've introduced some of them to you. Our fundraising committee chair, Mr. Barry Stumbo, couldn't be with us today, but he's in the process of getting that fundraising aspect going. We had a business plan committee, an ad hoc business plan committee created in December of 2008 as we awaited receiving the final draft of the business plan from the AMS Planning and Research Committee. And they read and reread and studied the draft report. Although the task force decided to accept the report, there was never consensus that the report depended on the future of the Lyric. The report did not include, however, fundraising. The task force has a committee for that purpose, to establish a foundation and or are friends of the Lyric group, to include donations and volunteer opportunities. It didn't include grant possibilities. LexArts could be a grant possibility. Kentucky Arts Council, Lucille Little Foundation, Museum Tour Grants, the Southern Arts Federation, Museum Tour Grants, and others. Potential partnerships to reduce costs and to generate activity and income and to guarantee continuous use of the Lyric could be school programs, which could include retired school teachers as volunteers, arts camps, the UK Art Museum, Explorium, the Living Arts and Science Center, the Heritage Arts Center, area schools, particularly William Wells Brown Elementary, who is in that 3rd Street Corridor, the Lexington Ballet, and other dance buildings. Parks and Recreation, churches, such as Central Christian, who may be able to help us with the parking. Problem downtown. Community centers. Our reach should exceed our grasp. We haven't done this for three years. This has been going on for 12 years. And we have taken our jobs seriously. So we want this project to come to fruition. During construction, tours could be conducted so that the potential users can see for themselves the opportunities for usership. instead of waiting for the lyric to open and then try to figure out how they're going to use it. LFUCG owns the lyric. You represent the citizens of Lexington. We are the citizens appointed by the former Mayor Isaac in 2005 and reappointed by Mayor Newberry in 2007. From my perspective, we and you are stakeholders in this process. The Lyric Theater can and shall be a cornerstone of the revitalization and redevelopment of the 3rd Street Corridor. It will respect and reflect the theater's rich African-American cultural heritage, but the new paradigm will also be one of inclusivity for all ages, cultures, ethnicities, and groups of people. It will be a place to go where our community and visitors will be proud. So, I'm asking you now to join in with us in bringing forth this exciting, beautiful Lyric Theater for this millennium and millennia to come. Now is the time to act boldly and swiftly. I remember President Obama saying that. Please release the funds for the construction phase to begin this spring. The MOU time clock is ticking. Project construction must begin ASAP. We will take the appropriate steps to continue working on the business plan. We start our efforts to forge ahead building networks that foster collaboration and partnerships. And the Lyric will fill the niche needed in the arts and cultural community. Lastly, it will honor the commitment made to our community at our meetings. For that, I say to you, we have worked hard. We have worked diligently. We are serious. We are not hired. We are just interested in bringing this to fruition. I love these kinds of challenges. I've been in challenges all my life. As far as the parking is concerned, let me say this. I've gone to the Opera House. I went to see Mamma Mia myself. I've gone to the State Theater I've gone to the Kentucky Theater I've gone to the History Center I've gone to the Downtown Arts Center UK, I worked there for 10 years I had a hang tag that was just a hunting license so if people really want to facilitate that parking for us we can go out and seek and I don't ever mind asking people for money because they know how to ask me. I don't mind seeking friends and those of us who can help facilitate that aspect. But I know one thing. When 50,000 people show up for the Roots and Heritage Festival, the police are there. We can forge a partnership with the police force to be there on site when we have larger activities going on. There's nothing that we cannot do if we put our heads together. and that's the way I feel about this. If you have any questions, I'd appreciate it. And remember one thing, we have a legacy to leave to our children and our grandchildren. When I ride and look at the lyric, it is dilapidated and old and ugly. I moved here from Illinois. I've lived in six states. I'm not proud of what I see on that corner. Are you going to be proud of what you see in 2010 if that building is not completed to have a tour bus ride on 4th in Amstree Lane and see that dilapidated site. It is our responsibility, not mine, not the task forces, but all of our responsibility to ensure that this building goes forward. I believe in it, and I think you will as well. Ms. Pearson, thank you so much. Will you be able to stay with us through Mr. Greenberg's presentation? I certainly will. If we could let Mr. Greenberg go, and then we'll open up the floor to questions to Ms. Peterson and Mr. Greenberg. I think it will give us all additional information and may develop some more questions for both of them. Mr. Greenberg, welcome. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me today. Let me just say my colleague Lynette Turner worked with me on most of this project and with the task force and is on vacation this week, so otherwise she would have been here. Let me also just say, wow, we're missing part of the slide on there, but, well, we'll be okay. I'll try to kind of fast forward through some of this, as I had thought we were looking at kind of an hour total in my presentation, so I don't want to beat the parking dead horse. We'll kind of fast forward through the parts that maybe we don't need to cover. This is essentially the elements of our scope of work. We conducted a series of leadership interviews with government, civic, business, arts, culture, education leaders. We conducted a market analysis, a user needs analysis, essentially the potential renters of the Lyric theater space. We looked at programming in terms of the performing arts in the theater as well as traveling museum exhibits. We did a series of case studies with some comparable venues that we helped identify in partnership with the task force, developed some operating projections, and have recommended some next steps. I'll just say we kind of our first week in town interviewed a total of 32 individuals, again in kind of small group and individual interviews, and as you can see those categories that I just mentioned, and we had a very good sampling of opinions. Just a few highlights that came out of those interviews. There was some discussion about the desire for flexible seating rather than just having, what I understood the last count, 588 fixed seats, that there be some provision for kind of table and chair or cabaret seating. We're seeing a bit of a trend right now in that, and some of the community leaders were interested in that as well. Obviously, parking has been addressed, and we heard a lot about the need for convenient and safe parking. Lots of ideas, no shortage of ideas on what might take place in the Lyric Theater, and certainly as regards the museum, the feeling that there be ongoing changing exhibits and not just something permanent so that repeat visitation can be encouraged. Just some key demographic measures that we look at. As you can see, this was based on 07 estimates. In our opinion, income, education, family status, and age are really the key variables that govern arts attendance. As you can see there, percentage with college degree, Fayette County at 36 percent, is more than twice the rate of the state of Kentucky. So that is our single biggest predictor of whether or not people attend performing arts programs and a fairly healthy measure there. Again, the median household income in about a quarter of households over $75,000 is another barometer of how frequently people attend. So just some kind of key demographic variables. To round out demographics, we look at what are called lifestyle segmentation. You might have heard the term geodemographic segmentation or values and lifestyles, psychographics. Essentially what we've done here is look at the top segments. This is through PRISM, a national research firm that analyzes reams of data and assigns these codes, these numbers, and these cute little titles. As you can see, this is not our language, but rather PRISMs. So in Lexington, Fayette, there is a total of about 50% of the population falls into these 15 segments. Now, the numbers are generally in order of income, number one through 66. So what we're looking at here are fairly middle income and some lower income segments that are pretty predominant in this market. Again, segments like home sweet home, second city elite with about 4,000 or 5,000 households in each of those segments, 2%, 3% of the population. and those indices are how they compare to the state as a whole. So there's a good concentration of certain high arts attending segments. I would call your attention also, though, to the lower part of this chart, and the names are somewhat self-explanatory, and there's a lot more detail in the report itself, but Sunset City Blues, City Startups, Mobility Blues, Park Bench Seniors, these are lower income and kind of less likely to attend segments. In terms of our user needs analysis, a series of kind of perspective use categories, musical theater, which would have certain requirements for the space. We know that not all of these will be able to be met given the size of the stage and kind of the limitations of the space. But ideally, for several of the uses, this is what they're looking for. A lot of interest by music groups. As always is the case with music groups, whether or not the acoustics work is something that kind of remains to be determined once the building is open, but there are lots of treatments that can be done acoustically in providing a shell. Several dance organizations expressed interest, again, having their use dependent on that space being very usable for dance with a wood floor and a stage that can accommodate enough performers. Finally, in terms of the backstage and support space, there are a number of groups who would be envisioning bringing 100 to 200 performers, the dance recitals, et cetera, and they need space when they're not on the stage, whether it's often backstage or dressing rooms or in the wings. In this case, again, one of the potential uses of the multipurpose room is as an overflow space, kind of be a makeshift dressing room when you have 200 little dance school recital kids. So we conducted about 25 to 30 e-mail and web-based surveys, as well as follow-up calls to a series of organizations, arts groups, community-based organizations, civic and social clubs, and businesses in terms of their potential use of really the lyric theater and to some extent the multipurpose room. This chart gives us a kind of low and high range of performances annually. As you can see, Bluegrass Youth Ballet would imagine between five and seven rentals for performance annually, as well as the rehearsal and tech days. And then the meetings and events is kind of a separate category because it applies only to the multipurpose room. As you can see, we get down to the bottom there, and we have identified a total of about 30 to 60 rentals for performance. as well as another 50 to about 100 rehearsal tech days. Those are the days leading up to the performance, and rental rates are about half of performance rental rates, but most of those dates are needed in order to pull off the performance. And as well as meetings and events, again, this was kind of based on the universe of groups we were given to survey and those that responded, about 20 to 45 potential uses of the multipurpose room for meetings and events. Now, there are some additional hourly rentals of that space for rehearsals that are not included on this chart. We asked a general kind of about what rent they would be willing to pay. There are some industry standards, I think, that kind of start at about a dollar a seat. Again, we've been working on the number 588 seats so that a basic rent for a local nonprofit group, again, before any discounts or resident company status would be discussed, somewhere in the range of about $600. As you can see, the average here comes out to about $450 on average for performance, about $150 for rehearsal tech, and a fairly low $87 average number for the multipurpose room. We did a series of case studies. Again, these were based on trying to identify venues that had as many similarities to what was proposed at the Lyric, which includes essentially a renovated historic movie theater in potentially a similar market. with somewhere in the range of 500 to 600 seats and some additional space, perhaps a museum, perhaps a multipurpose room, or so on. Now we're looking a little better there. And as well, I guess, overlying all of those variables was the idea of some African-American focus, whether it's an African-American-run organization or programming that's targeting an African-American population, and so on. Many of these were known by members of the task force or had been visited by members of the task force, and many of them we have also visited during our years of work. In Kansas City is the Gem Theater. It's actually part of the American Jazz Museum. Obviously a much larger market, but some interesting similarities. Again, seat count, 512, a movie house that had been renovated by the city. This is a very, in some ways, didn't make a very good model for us because of the way it's staffed. This is essentially part of the American Jazz Museum, which is a much larger operation. And this is the theater that they use to do jazz programming. As you can see, one of their best-known events is Jammin' at the Gym, which has an annual programming budget of about $125,000 alone. Now, the gem runs with one full-time person, but that doesn't take into account all of the museum people. As you can see, an event coordinator, all the building and maintenance staff, marketing and development is all handled by the museum. So it's really impossible to separate out and isolate the costs just for the gem theater. So while we looked at it, we did not include it in our kind of benchmarking numbers. Morton Theater in Athens, again, a much more similar market, but once again, 500 seats, a historic movie theater that was renovated. In this case, the Athens-Clarke County government took ownership, as you can see, in 1993. They run it as a performing arts center, and a nonprofit organization, the Morton Theater Corporation, actually does the programming. In terms of the programming, what you can see here is there is no presenting series. Let me just make sure we all understand terminology here. Presenting means that the venue would hire an artist at their risk, whether it's a local, a regional, or a national, or an international artist. That so-and-so is on the road. You can hire the Alvin Ailey Dance Company for $50,000 to play in your theater for one night. You pay their fee. You're responsible for selling tickets and either making money or losing money, as the case might be, as well as selling sponsorships. Most of these venues, if they're not in the presenting arena, then they're either doing producing, meaning they have a resident company, a theater company, a dance company, an orchestra, some music group that is in residence and actually producing events, or they're talking rentals, essentially what we call a four-wall facility. Here's the venue. This is what it costs to rent. You want to come in and use it? Great. You're responsible for selling tickets and so on. So the Morton is an example of probably the one extreme where it's mostly, almost strictly a rental house. They renovated it. It's available. Anyone who wants to use it can rent it, but they are not actively programming it. Again, they have some University of Georgia groups that rent it, as well as some church services that use the Morton. In this case, three full-time staff people. They're all county government employees. As you can see, they're an executive director, tech, and theater assistant. They have a budget that is only $126,000, but that does not include staff time. So the theater's budget is looked at separately from the actual staff costs that are covered within the county budget. As you can see, 90% of their revenues come from rentals, and they do very little fundraising. So the Morton should be looked at as kind of the minimal model, if you will. We have a building. It's out there. We staff it minimally. We don't really use it for presenting. And we rent it out about 160 to 170 days a year. Another model that's much more similar to what was originally envisioned in the brief we were given for the building as configured 29,000 square feet and the idea of bringing in touring artists is the Attics Theater in, I'm going to say it properly, Norfolk, Virginia. Again, a much larger market, but very similar. It's amazing how many of these early century vaudeville houses have been renovated by city governments. In this case, again, very similar between 500 and 600 seats. This is actually owned by a nonprofit, which contracts with the government, in this case, to book and maintain it. And as you can see, a wide range, much more wide range of programming at the attics, local groups doing rentals, touring events, lots of presenting going on, as well as classes, workshops, and summer camps. In this case, two full-time staff of the nonprofit organization, the manager and the assistant manager, but several city arts staff, and as you can see, they have a unified Department of Cultural Affairs that runs all of their cultural venues, which is something that, kind of jumping into the last slide, we're suggesting given LFUCG's involvement in multiple spaces, this might be a model to look at further. But their events coordinator, their marketing people, their maintenance people, their engineering and production crews are all coming from this central city department. In terms of their budget, again, this is not the nonprofit. Well, the nonprofit essentially besides the cost of staff, the city's subsidy has risen annually. And last year, it was running about $470,000 to keep this building going at the level of programming that they had envisioned. So while it's a very good model for what we think was envisioned at the Lyric, it's also a costly model from the standpoint of subsidy. And that's just kind of from our research to let you know what we found out. Now, on the kind of other side of the spectrum is the King Arts Complex in Columbus, recognized as one of really the great kind of African-American cultural centers. Once again, a historic theater with slightly fewer seats in this case that was renovated. Interestingly, they have some of the other components that are envisioned at the Lyric, including a multipurpose room. This was a former elementary school, by the way. It is near a park, essentially next to a park. And the question came up about parking. There is a lot of on-site parking at King. I don't know about Morton or Addicts. That was not something we looked at. But I think you can see this little picture here. That's the multipurpose room, and they do a very big banquet business. So that's really a key component of the King Arts Complex. Now, this again representing the other side of the spectrum, they have 14 full-time and eight part-time staff running it as a pretty major operation. Again, executive director, full-time development person, full-time finance, full-time marketing and membership, a performing arts director who's involved in booking the acts, education and cultural, creative operations, and so on, as well as facilities staff. So kind of the opposite from the Morton. They have an annual budget of $1.5 million. Again, most of that comes from facility rentals. They make a little bit from memberships. There is no public funding that goes into this building except for some subsidy of camp enrollments. And extensive programming, as you can see. They have, in addition, they have kind of a courtyard area, and they do some outdoor summer concerts right there on the park. They do special events, again, classes, summer camps, and six annual changing exhibits so that the visual arts part of the King Arts Complex is much more similar to what the Lyric was thinking about than any of the other models we looked at. In order to come up with a programming plan, a business plan, again, some of what we were asked to do is really focus on, of these venues, what touring artists are they presenting? And as you can see, this is just a list of kind of in the last 12 to 18 months. One of the things that we're seeing in our business is the rising cost of artist fees. And as you can see, these range from kind of a low of about $10,000 up to $25,000 or more, and that's without travel and per diem costs. So whether it's Parliament Funkadelic or Savon Glover or the Sweet Season, again, Philodanko, Alicia Keys, some of these artist fees are much more expensive as well as getting them here. Now, some of them can actually be less expensive. Obviously, someone's passing through on their way from A to B, and they have an opportunity to come into Lexington on a Tuesday night. We can get them for much less. Some regional and tour itineraries, as you can see, as low as $3,500 to maybe $5,000 for some of these touring artists. We also looked at the costs of traveling exhibits. I know there's a lot more detail in the report, but essentially they range, kind of requirement, or space requirements. generally a rental is about 10 weeks plus the cost of shipping the exhibit, and those range, again, from a low of about $3,500 for some photographs up to $25,000 with significant climate and security requirements in order to host those exhibitions. So after having done all of that research and presenting that and having about two, three meetings with the task force, we really came up with three scenarios for operation. The first one is kind of operating as the vision had been put forth as a nonprofit cultural center. Again, three components, performing arts, museum, multipurpose room. So we looked again at those three that have very similar seat counts and kind of elements of the programming, the Attucks, the Morton, and the King. We threw out the gem because it's just not able to be analyzed on the same level. So as you can see there, this summary chart kind of lays it out for you. Three full-time people at the Morton, two plus the city staff at the Attucks, 14 full-time plus eight part-time at the King. Budgets ranging from about $325,000 a year, $500,000 city costs at the Attucks, plus other dollars, and $1.5 million at the King. renting rentals only at the Morton and mix of presenting and rental activity at the other two. One of the other scenarios we looked at is kind of the same nonprofit cultural center model, but with lower staffing and lower salary levels than what we had initially come up with. Actually, let me just back up one step and say, when we created this chart, we kind of said, where would the Lyric fall? And essentially put it somewhere in the middle to say, well, the Morton is kind of bare bones. It's just a rental facility. Why put all this money into something if you're just going to let it sit there and hope it gets rented? You really want to program it actively. The King is obviously a much larger and kind of bigger operation. So we see the Lyric coming somewhere in the middle, something like the Attics. and imagined about five full-time staff people and a series of part-time staff people. So, again, working with the task force, we were asked to try to lower the staffing levels and try to lower the operating costs. So we went from five full-time and two part-time people and made that three full-time and three part-time positions. So at their direction, we combined the marketing and development director and made an administrative assistant part-time. We also reduced the salaries about a quarter across the board. We had been using what we consider to be kind of the real market costs, and we're told that we'd be able to maybe get some of those staffing positions for less money. So scenario two becomes what we call the reduced nonprofit cultural center. I didn't spend a lot of time coming up with names for the scenarios. And scenario three is really more like the Morton. You can't really staff it any less because it still has the museum and the multipurpose room component, but essentially we reduce the presenting activity in half, so we're spending less money on artist fees, we have less ticket sales, less concessions, and so on. The key to making this scenario work is to maximize rentals by commercial promoters. Our research certainly led us down a path that a 600-seat venue is really missing in this market, that there would be a number of promoters bringing in jazz, rock, folk, blues kind of acts that would want to use a space like this. Now, often what happens, though, is if we're giving precedent to those promoters, then some of the local nonprofit groups aren't maybe going to be able to get in there when they want to get in there. and also just the sense that from talking to these promoters that they don't have much appetite for working with kind of community boards. You know, they want to get in and get out, and they want the dates they want. So that was the rental venue was kind of scenario three. Just a series of assumptions that went into our pro forma. LFUCG is the owner of the building. They could contract out with a nonprofit for either operations or programming and so on. The occupancy costs of this building on a calculated basis come out to about $188,000 a year. That is essentially utilities, maintenance, and custodial, as well as a little bit of insurance costs. And again, at the direction of the task force and Mr. Boland, we were to assume that LFUCG would be providing that cost in each of these scenarios. Very important, our assumptions are that the building will have adequate sound, light, and rigging systems and the staffing levels to operate them. If you don't have that, these rentals are going to be hard to materialize. And especially given some of the specific needs of some of these users, there might be other more kind of high-tech needs for broadcast quality sound, lighting, power, and high-speed Internet. We have not, it wasn't asked of us to kind of analyze the building program to see how much of that is included, and we're recommending as we get to the end here that that's something that you should look at. Again, most of the nonprofit users are insistent that there be space for dressing rooms and performers and so on, as well as parking that is perceived safe and convenient. So just a series of assumptions, which you're going to have an impossible time reading there, but essentially 588 seats, rental rates that range from $1 a seat for a local nonprofit organization to $2.50 a seat for a commercial performance for a promoter. The multipurpose room rents at kind of similar discounts for local nonprofits and higher for commercial. fringe benefits rates. We have concessions that about 50% of patrons spend an average of $3, and we make about half a profit of 50% on that. Again, 29,000 square feet and a total of $6.49 per square foot for the occupancy costs, which is how we get to the 188. As you can see, janitorial utilities, maintenance supplies, grounds and security, some insurances and bonding. This is all from the building owners and managers association. They publish an annual guide. So this is all real reported data for Lexington Market. So, again, just to kind of show you, and eventually we threw out the scenarios one and two, But again, at scenario one, we had five full-time and two part-time people and hourly people. In scenarios two and three, we reduced that. We now have three full-time and three part-time staff members. What happened there? In terms of programming, again, in the first two scenarios, we were looking at 12 presented events annually. And you think about it on a calendar basis, that's really only one a month. And so, and I don't know how you're going to be able to read that, but about 121 total event days. In scenario three, we've reduced that number of presentations by half and have included more commercial rentals, about 20 total. Ticket sales average about $20 to $25 ticket prices at the presented events, and we estimate all of these at 65% capacity. Some of them might sell out, some of them might do less, but on an average annual basis we don't expect that we would ever incorporate more than two-thirds of audience numbers in our projections. Again, I mentioned concessions, and there's also a box office ticket surcharge. It's a common source of revenue these days at these venues. Every ticket that's sold for anything in this building would have a dollar surcharge to help fund the facility. That's not a ticket master surcharge. It's just a facility surcharge. So scenario one, again, five full-time people, much more presenting, therefore higher attendance, With the $188,000 of LFUCG subsidies showing as a revenue, we have revenues of about $471,000 compared to expenses of $870,000, leaving an annual operating deficit of about $400,000. Again, this is what we think is in line with what the ADEX is in Norfolk. But, again, given the costs of this, we were asked to kind of go back to the drawing board and try to come up with something that would be less expensive to run. Scenario two, as I mentioned, we've now reduced the level of staffing, but we're still kind of at the level of programming that we thought was consistent with the vision of the task force. So now, again, revenues are about the same. expenses go down, and we're at an operating deficit of about $270,000 a year. Again, in this case, revenue is covering about 64, two-thirds of the expenses, which is a pretty good benchmark for this business. Scenario three, which became the preferred scenario of the task force, essentially we've reduced everything. Again, assuming the provision of the occupancy cost subsidy, We're now down to a deficit of $157,000, again, about revenues covering three-quarters of the cost of running this building. A couple things about that. There are all kinds of ways to make up that deficit. So let's be clear, that's before any fundraising, before any grants, before any – which we would just be making up numbers to kind of insert line items, but that's dependent on having the staff and the wherewithal to do it the right way. Let me just – did you want to say something? Or you want me to wrap up? Yeah, if you could take about four or five minutes and wrap up, because we had this presentation. You had this presentation? Well, we have your recommendation from your report. Okay, I thought this is what you wanted me to do. We have most of that information already. If you could just wrap up for us, because there are several questions already. Okay, well, let me just say we looked at a number of other ways you might raise revenues, whether it was making the rent higher. We don't think that the market is going to be able to bear that, nor will the arts groups. You can do more rentals, but the number of event rentals you're already doing is fairly ambitious. You could generate sponsorships, and certainly for presenting, there might be sponsors out there. You can do all kinds of fundraising and corporate foundation individual. Concessions is pretty ambitious, unfortunately, unless you're selling a lot of beer at basketball games are probably not going to earn a lot more on concessions. Gift shop, some museums have it. In terms of at a performing arts center, we've just done some analysis, and while it might be a nice thing to have, it's not probably going to earn a lot of money. Film, again, more programming. In this case, at best, would probably break even. You might sell a little more popcorn. We do think there's a membership potential, and there are some of these, again, at the case study sites. so you could generate family memberships and make some money from that. You could consider charging for the museum right now. That is not incorporated in the budget, but we don't think that will be a very good idea, given that most of these are similar, are free. And who knows in terms of what endowments are going to generate these days. So just kind of the management and governance. You guys can own and operate it. You can give it to some nonprofit to own and operate, or you can come up with something in the middle where you own it and give it a contract with a nonprofit or sometimes just have a friend's organization. Many of those people we interviewed believe that actually it should be an LFUCG owned and operated. Whoops. I think there was just one more on there, but actually we don't need to cover that right now. If we wanted to, we can cover that later. So happy to answer your question. Thank you. And I didn't mean to rush you, but we have the report, and if we need to go back, we'll be glad to go back to any parts of his presentation if any members want to. I have Councilman Gordon as the first committee member has a question. I appreciate it, Chair, and I apologize. I do have to leave in a few minutes, but thank you for your report, Mr. Greenberg. I have one question about something you said and then a couple of other questions. In the Columbus, Ohio venue, you mentioned it was a former school. Does Columbus, is the school system integrated into the city, or did the school system give that facility, or did the city buy that facility? I was just curious if you know. I have no idea. So you don't know how to acquire it? We only look at it from an operating standpoint, not from how it was developed. The expenditure for the facility. Right. I was just curious about that. One thing that struck me, I noticed in the report that the Lyric Theater Task Force has a stated mission. And normally a mission drives a business plan. It drives everything that's done. And I noticed that there was no mission for the Lyric Theater itself, which I would have thought would have kind of driven your work. In other words, nowhere in here did it say the Lyric Theater provides a theater to a museum to. And do you find that in your work unusual that you start out without a mission statement for the actual facility? I don't know if that's common or not. I know the task force had a mission statement. Well, I don't know if in this case there's really any separation between the task force's mission. And if it wasn't about the building, I don't think the task force would have a mission just for being a task force. I mean, it's either semantically incorrect in the report or, I mean, in the sense, we were given a concept for a building that said it would have these kinds of spaces and asked, how could it best operate? certainly there was the assumption that the task force wanted and expected that the building would be used kind of like the models they had visited that they would rent it and they would present in it so I don't think that ever became a question that we wrestled with yeah last week I had asked a question about the curator because I noticed in your plan there's no mention of a museum curator. And I know that someone's going to have to accept the museum items, catalog them, determine how they'll be displayed, et cetera, et cetera. And so I was curious about that piece. And in conjunction with that, I wondered if you talk to the History Museum folks here and there was any thought to sharing a curator? Can you tell me your thoughts about that? Well, let me just say that essentially the vision we were presented with for the museum was that it would have a permanent exhibit and it would host some traveling exhibits, but it would not be an active collecting institution. I mean, I think that the terminology is worth clarifying. I mean, there are museums and there are exhibit spaces. Certainly early on, I think the assumption is that there's some very important and noteworthy African American history. Fabricating, commissioning and fabricating a permanent exhibit that tells the story of African American history in Lexington would not require a curator nor a collection, that essentially that's an expense, that's a capital expense. There is here an annual cost for bringing in traveling exhibits, but once again, that would not require a curator. They're coming in crates. You need someone to uncrate, you know, kind of hourly staff, which are included here, to uncrate and hang traveling exhibits two to three times a year. So the employees, the proposed employees in here would be the ones who were putting out the exhibit, uncrating things, crating things. They would actually be working in the museum to put up the exhibit. Is that what you're saying is some of the employees who are recommended? Yeah. You're just trying to get a feel for who's going to do that work. Yeah. No, I think that's the assumption, that we're not talking about staffing this museum as what you might consider a museum to be staffed at, but rather, again, a permanent exhibit that is installed once and a space for some traveling exhibits, but not an ongoing collecting institution. So where would the permanent exhibit come from? Well, that is a capital question that is not in – that's something that I've talked to Shea a little bit about in terms of where – that you need to be thinking about an interpretive plan and an exhibit designer and exhibit fabrication that should be in your capital budget at some per square foot cost. It's not an operating expense. Is that in here? Is that built into here in the expense model? It's not an operating expense. So if it's in Susan Hill's budget, I think there's a provision for permanent exhibits in the capital budget. Now, one other question, and then I know there are others who have questions. Marketing and development, is this a piece, in your view, that could be shared with another LFUCG-owned entity such as the History Museum? That position. Well, it's something that we've recommended. as an additional step. We heard early on that if, you know, that LFUCG owns multiple venues, that we should really be looking at this from a much bigger picture than just the Lyric. Essentially, we've stopped short of that. I must say, we, you know, originally recommended that there be separate marketing and development people. You either have some annual nut of $160,000 to $400,000 to crack, as well as marketing multiple presentations. We're concerned about combining those. So if you have a combined position to begin with that you then try to share with some other venue, I don't quite know how they devote their attention to the Lyric. Now, if we're talking about some centralized marketing and development office that serves two, three, or more venues, that's a great model, but it's not something that we've been able to do through this contract. I was just curious. Oh, I think it's a great idea. Because I think that what I was thinking is if there was a marketing development position, could that person who fills that spend 30 hours a week getting the Lyric up and running and going in marketing and development and 10 hours a week, for instance, with the History Museum. I mean, I'm just kind of thinking out loud because you're here and we have the opportunity to ask you about this. It seems to me that the less segmented the LFUCG-owned arts facilities are, the less segregated, but the more integrated they are in what we're trying to accomplish in the arts community, that might be better. Well, again, we think it's a great idea. Norfolk is the model. They have a centralized City Department of Cultural Affairs. It serves seven venues all together with centralized staffing. There are other models out there. It's absolutely worth pursuing. Well, I appreciate your time and thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Myers next. I was going to say thank you, Mayor, but thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll answer to either. Thank you for coming in today, Mr. Greenberg. Actually, the last statement you made was where I was going to go. When you did your analysis, did you look at the State Theater, the Kentucky Theater, the Downtown Art Center, and those other facilities, opera house to see how they were managed or how that could all be incorporated maybe together? Only in as much as we looked at their seat counts and, you know, from a competitive standpoint, we were asked to develop a business plan for the Lyric not to address. Certainly through my initial meetings with other people in the arts on this community, Jim, and we entirely agree that LFUCG needs to look at that, but it was not something that we were asked to do at this stage. Okay. Well, the example you just gave where you said they had centralized staffing, did that come into the conversations at all? Well. With the task force? I mean, I understand that that wasn't necessarily your charge, but as a consultant, as a professional, did you include that in the conversation? Well, yeah. I mean, in the sense that we said here are some models and here's how they operate, and the model that we think is closest to what you envision for the Lyric operates with a centralized staffing level at city government, I think the task force realized that made some sense. But again, and at some point early on, I think we said, you know, we really should look at this from, you know, either change our scope or expand it a little bit to say, let's look at all your venues together. And essentially, we were, you know, on the gun to kind of plow through and complete this. I think it's an analysis that makes sense that we weren't contracted to do. We would love to help you with it at some point in the future, and it probably could create all kinds of operating efficiencies. Okay. I think the task force was aware of that, but without kind of getting into lots of detailed analysis of their staffing and their revenues and expenses, it becomes a huge undertaking. Right, and the task force didn't have the money to pay you to do that. That wasn't just go for the contract, and I realize that. Okay, thank you. Okay. Thank you. Councilman McCord and Councilman Blues. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just, again, appreciate your time and coming down. The slide that you showed as far as rentals and things like that, where we had 30 to 90 or whatever that was, 75, as far as those groups go, where are they meeting now, I guess, is one question I have. And kind of how do we base that upon? And I know you met with them and they expressed interest and so forth, but are they meeting currently in an LFUCG site? Is that taking from one place to put another? As I looked at the slide, I just wanted some clarity, I guess, on as you talked to them and they expressed interest in using this facility, kind of where are they now and what kind of commitment did they make? Well, I think the answer to that is they're all over the place. As part of our survey, we do ask them where they're currently performing, but I hate to sound kind of cold-hearted about it. Our charge was the lyric. If we survey people and they said, we want to rent a Lyric, it's really not our problem to worry about, does that mean facility A or B is going to lose rentals? I think for the most part, but having said that, I think most of these are, a lot of them were essentially finding free space in churches and not kind of the cannibalization effect, which is what we call it, is the right hand opens a new facility and it then draws rentals away from the left hand. I think most of these, again, are pretty minimal, as you can see, two to three or three to four or three to five a year. And I do have that data in terms of where they currently perform, but they'll do one thing maybe at the state and one thing at a church and one thing. So it's pretty hit and miss. I think the sum total here of, you know, 30 to 60 nonprofit rentals a year wouldn't have any major effect on any of your existing venues. Well, like I say, it's just as I looked at that slide, I guess in the notebook, one of the things that stood out to me was the I think it was hundred and some thousand dollars worth of revenue was coming from rentals from 89 nonprofit groups a year and 30 commercial groups a year and so forth. And you start looking at that. And, again, we're living in a dramatically different world than we were just six months ago. And I know that every single nonprofit that I work with that's out there is absolutely up against it right now and cutting people and this and that and the other. And so as I look at that, I just, in the back of my mind, that's the piece of, a piece of the business plan that I have some concern about. And then, you know, as I saw this slide, I was just curious, okay, are they already meeting in an LFUCG facility and so forth and so on? And I know it's past the scope of your work, but I think that that's some of the questions that folks have at First Blush when we got the notebook and you're looking through and seeing this is how we look to sustain it in the good years and so forth. Yeah, I think it's a great point. Let me just say, when you use the word commitment, at this stage, no one ever signs anything. I mean, the question is, if there were a 588-seat theater that were suitably equipped that had, you know, A, B, and C, would you want to rent it on a range of low to high, and what would you spend? And we deal with that input, and we try to qualify it. I mean, if, you know, Arts Group A has done one event a year and they tell us we're going to do 90 rentals and, well, we're going to, you know, kind of ask the question and follow up and say, well, how real is that? I think, as you can see, most of this is pretty conservative. Now, you know, is the whatever ex-friends of the art school going to have the money to rent this twice in 2011? 11, my guess is a little bit better than yours, but maybe not much given the world around us. Well, and like I say, I think that, and I know Jim Clark can speak a little bit better to some of the things we've talked about, about consolidating and efficiencies and things like that. And, you know, one of the things that I think has been said over and over and over, but it bears repeating, is I don't think anybody sitting up here is against seeing that building become something that's not an eyesore and it's something that we'd be proud of to our kids and grandkids. And I think also with the investment that's going on into the Third Street corridor in that area over the next decade, I think that that's a real linchpin. And so I don't think anybody up here has any question that putting money into that facility and making it something special and spectacular, and I think Councilman Lane said it well, everybody wants to see this succeed. somehow, somehow, we have to pull the emotion out of this a little bit and look at this in a very cold way with the business plan. And I think that that's what these meetings are all about is does this work? Is there a better way? Is there something that can be inserted or taken away that causes this thing to be sustainable? Because at the end of the day, the one thing you want is this thing to work. and people who are, frankly, in the suburbs that say, you know, why are we doing this and so forth and don't understand the history and don't understand MOUs and things like that, you want to be able to point to them in a few years and go, this is why. And so I think that at the end of the day, what hopefully we can do as a body is really look at this in a very calculated way and offer some expertise to see what can happen. I know the vice mayor, I hate that he had to leave. I know he had a number of things that over the last week have been coming to him as opportunities and so forth. So anyway, at the end of the day, I appreciate everything that everybody's doing, and I just want to make sure that folks recognize that there's no question up here about moving forward with this project and seeing this thing successful. How we do it is really the key thing, and making sure that what we're seeing is accurate and so forth is where we're coming from. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Council Member Blues and Council Member James. Council Member James Greenberg, I wanted to ask a question about a point that is made in a footnote on page 3 of the business plan where you say that you have been engaged by by the government to undertake the business plan, and in the footnote, qualify that by saying that it's important to note that your engagement did not call for analysis or judgment as to feasibility or viability of the project. And I wonder if in the kinds of work that In the kinds of work that you do and the business plans that you prepare, is that, since you were careful to point this out, that you were not called upon to comment on feasibility, is that usual? Well, let me just say we are retained by a variety of clients to do a variety of different kinds of projects. A core percentage of our work is doing feasibility studies, at which point we're asked to render some judgment on feasibility. Now, that word means something different to almost everyone. You know, at the end of the day, almost anything's feasible if you can come up with enough money to make it work. So I, and in that sense, we rarely say it's absolutely infeasible. Now, in addition to being hired to do feasibility studies, we're also hired to do business plans, which normally follows a feasibility study. Feasibility would essentially make a rendered judgment on market and building. And essentially, the reason that footnote is in here is that there was never any question that this project wasn't going to happen. It was clear to us from day one that the MOU and the dollars, you know, Lyric Theater is going to be renovated. The question is, how can you make it work? However, I must say in our initial series of interviews, we did hear to the task force's credit, to Charlie's credit, we said we don't only want to talk to supporters. So we did talk to and hear from a number of detractors. And, you know, essentially got past that at the first task force meeting by saying, whereas we understand there are a lot of people that are against the project, it's not on the table. So I guess the reason that footnote is in there where it is is to clarify that the terms of our engagement were that of a business plan and not a feasibility study. So, in other words, your analysis is predicated on the fact that this will be done, the money will be provided. We were essentially, yeah, given your architect's building program, X number of square feet, multipurpose room, museum, theater of 588 seats. Throughout the process, we've made some, I'd say, minor recommendations, things like the capital cost of the exhibits, things like the technical systems, theater, sound, lights, rigging, to try to make sure that that plan is as good a capital plan as it can be. So we've offered those opinions throughout. But, yeah, I think I've answered. Thank you very much. Thank you. I ask this because, again, as Council Member McCord said, we want to make the best judgment we can, and we want this to be a success for our community. Customer James. Thank you, Chair. I'm glad that Council Member Blues and Council Member McCord have brought that to our attention, that where we sitting around the horseshoe, hopefully, all understand that we are under a mandate, similar to the consent decree of doing something, that this is something that needs to be done, and we will have those detractors, as Mr. Greenberg pointed out, and those detractors will raise red flags every opportunity, regardless of the economic situation. So that's one thing that I wanted to clear up, and they will continue to. There will be continued reasons why not, reasons why to reconsider. We'll continue to get letters every single week. They're not the majority of the folks. They're a minority of the folks, and I think that that's one thing we have to keep in mind. we've all kind of agreed that it is an eyesore. There are a few people that would say tear it down. I haven't heard those people around the horseshoe yet say that, but that's one thing that we do need to keep in mind. I do want what Mr. Greenberg just responded, that this was not a feasibility, and actually the business plan was asked for, just for those that don't know and those watching that are just newly getting attuned to this 21-year issue, there were folks who asked for a business plan in order to make it successful. And I guess I'm hoping that was their intent. And as we had conversations with Mr. Greenberg, I'm part of the task force, and that was part of what we talked about is we need to find a successful business plan, not in IFI or, you know, let's call some of the detractors and see how we can find out how this not can happen, but how do we comply with the MOU so that we're not in another situation that we were in before of not completing something that we were supposed to do that was based around African-American culture. So based on all of the support of all the mayors before, all of the October 26th resolution, which passed through council unanimously, that was the approval for the $5.8 million design, which has not changed very much, and within that included acquisition of additional property for parking, which council voted on. I'm just stating all these things because I think folks watching and folks emailing And even some of the folks that have been detractors from the very beginning continue to question these things. But all of these things have been addressed. So I think we need to make sure that we're following the subsequent thing. And all of these new things that keep coming up aren't really new. They're all just kind of asking the same question all over again. So as we look forward to completing the building and renovation, I do look forward to some of the conversations that we've had today. Council Member Gordon had to leave. But one of the things we've talked about after doing site visits with regard to the curators was that there's a possibility that you can contract curators as needed at a minimal expense. If there's an exhibit that's traveling or a new permanent exhibit that comes in, you can contract a curator for a small fee that doesn't really cut into an operating or make a substantial dent in that operating, that we can utilize those folks. And there are so many people around Lexington even that are so excited about this opportunity that they would probably step up to the bat and be those contracted curators. So that, I think we've already dealt with the parking issue. Again, whatever we need to do to make that work, I think we can do it. There are successful things downtown all the time. Looking forward to having that conversation and working through that because I know it is hopeful, as Shay has mentioned. But I wanted to talk a little bit about the perspective usage as we look at this. And that was one of the first concerns some folks raised is are we taking from other places within the city? And what we heard are opportunities. When we interviewed or met with certain folks in the arts community in Lexington, we actually heard that there are many venues that are limited, whether they're union or whether they're under contract to do certain things on weekends, and that folks were excited because they have to turn away folks for certain opportunities. and they were excited that we would have a venue for those performers or for those performances. So, I mean, I think as we, the task force, I think probably initially based on a lot of past things, there was kind of this emotional thing, but I want to be clear to committee members and those watching that the task force, as Ms. Juanita said, took this very seriously, and we looked at this from the business aspect as well and continue to look at it. I mean, we did the site visits. We consulted with many folks. Susan Hill, just an expert at what she's done, she brought in other experts just to make sure that what we were doing was conducive to a good business plan and a good business plan model. So where folks are saying, you know, just be sure we remove the emotion, I would say the same thing to you. Be sure to remove the emotion. and we want to make sure that the task force and the work is seen as this. We were looking at it from a business aspect as well. That's why there's stacks and stacks of paperwork, and that's why we met on a monthly basis. That's why we formed a business plan committee, subcommittee, after we got this business plan to make sure that we were doing our due diligence as a task force to make sure that the information coming forward was the information that the task force had worked so hard at and was accurate based on what we believed. Again, the task force didn't ask for the business plan, but we do feel like that a business plan can be created and would have been, regardless of whether AMS had presented this business plan model or not. And I do think that we should look forward to going forward with the construction and looking at a model. If folks now are sending emails in to Vice Mayor last week that haven't been involved for the past 21 years, let's hear what those folks have to say, but also we need to be sure that we hear from what all of the folks for the past 21 years have said will work. So I look forward to those joint conversations. I do hope that out of this committee comes some sort of committee, I've said this before, or subcommittee or task force, and actually I would make a motion that we would form a task, have the vice mayor form a task force so that we can continue the conversation to discuss the business plan. Okay, there's a motion on the floor to ask the vice mayor to form a task force. Is there any discussion on that motion? Councilman Blues. I think that when we preliminarily discussed this a week ago, we talked about a kind of a working group rather than a task force. And I think that, you know, I guess the terminology doesn't matter so much, but I think that what we'd be interested in would be a relatively small group. and made up of those who do have business expertise from across the spectrum in the city. So I guess I'm saying here we need to define a little bit more closely what we're moving toward here. Should I clarify? Yes, Mayor James. I do agree that it should be very specific, that there would be technical components needed. We definitely would need someone who has experience in museum, someone who has experience in fundraising, someone who has experience in performance arts, someone who has experience in executive direction of a facility, a representative of the task force that can roll out the intent, the reasoning and intent of the task force. I don't want to lose that. I don't know, when you say small working group, I'm not sure we can try to find the perfect number, but I do know that we have certain components that would be necessary. There's actually a guide that the arts, like the national arts, I'm not sure what the last corporation or entity, that can help us to define who are the experts needed as you look at information. and that is information that was shared with us when we visited museum space out of West Virginia, so we can look at who the components would need to be and get Vice Mayor to appoint that based on the experts and what they feel like is necessary. Any other discussion for the motion? I would ask, Council Member James, to your motion. We've talked a lot about all of our arts properties, all of our operations we have. Are you looking at just specifically Lyric in terms of your motion for the task force, or do we want to incorporate in there, without making a motion to amend, of course, looking at all of our operations holistically so that that may become part and that model may become part of all of our operation? I don't necessarily mind that being joined with other LFUCG operating. I do, I would, though, say that I do not want to see the Lyric delayed because of some sort of overall concept that's going to take five to ten years to do and creation of some type of master plan for cultural arts. I do, this facility should be on point to open in 2010, and I would not like to see that delayed, and anything that would delay that, I would not support. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay, we have a motion on the floor. Councilman Blues. I was just going to add that's part of my reasoning for a focused working group, and it's very important that there be participants in it who represent some of the best business heads in the community. Anybody else? Okay, we have a motion on the floor to ask the Vice Mayor to form a task force to develop a business plan for the Lyric Theater. Is that correct, Councilman James, if you want to restate it? Yes, to develop that. And I guess while we're, I mean, do the other, this is just a question, but do the other arts facilities have business plans? So, I mean, where we're calling into question, you know, the Lyric, should that be something that at some point we need to ask the other arts organizations to have that because we'll be basing everything off of the Lyric business plan or do we need to look at the separate individual arts organizations which could lean towards that extension of time because if we've got to wait on everybody to develop a business plan in order to come together or bring all that to the table. So I would actually ask, I mean maybe this is a two-part committee, maybe the committee deals with the Lyric and then we look at bringing in those other arts organizations as part of the Lyric business plan, but we've got to definitely make sure that this is something that's addressed. I don't know how to word that. I just know that my intent is that the Lyric business plan be worked and be ready for, actually, the building will be complete in 2010, but really operating needs to start, and Chase at the mic, but operating, we really need to start considering that pretty quickly because we've got to get that first-year booking and some commitment from performance. So do you want to change your motion or restate it? No, I think the way that I stated it was appropriate. Do you have something to add to the motion? Maybe. I was just going to suggest, and I don't know how you do this procedurally, but perhaps a different name other than task force. I don't know if it can be a working group, just so as we don't get confused with the Lyric Theater task force. I don't know if that makes much of a difference. I think it's the same purpose, but perhaps a committee or a work group. The Larry Theater Task Force is no longer in existence, correct? No, it's currently in existence. Have they finished their work, though? What else are they charged with going forward after this body approves going forward with construction? Are they still in operation throughout the operating of it? Not necessarily, no. But right now they're still in existence helping develop, I mean, respond to whatever the requests are. I'm just saying if we're going to form a new task force, that's fine. It just needs to be clear, the distinction between the two groups so we don't get confused. Good point. Did you want to change the name? Sure. Let's see. Working group would be fine. Okay. Anybody else? Any other discussion before we take a vote? My second will go to the amendment. Okay. Friendly amendment. Councilman Henson. Thank you, Chair. I do think, I think it's very important that I agree with Council Member James that the lyric should not be postponed or delayed a great length of time. but I do think that we at some point should look into a collaborative effort for our art and cultural centers. It's my understanding that we support the Opera House and different culture and art centers. So if we could, like Council Member Gordon had said earlier, look at all of those and put out work to, instead of having one person at each art center or whatever, maybe have just a smaller group of people that oversee all of those entities. So that's probably not the work of this, but I just think that's something we should look at in the future. Very good. Thank you. Anyone else on this motion? Okay. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed, say nay. Okay. That motion passes. Councilman Lane. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yeah, I would like to say that I didn't know Mr. Greenberg was coming today, and we have two other parties that were going to address our meeting. And they were here at the previous meeting and they came back today. And I just wanted to thank them. It looks like our time is really tight. Do we have, do you want to go over another 10 or 15 minutes? That's up to the committee. I know I will leave the chair to Councilman Lane. I have a previous appointment to go to. I'd be glad to do that or we can look at next Tuesday morning to continue our discussion on this issue. I know we have several people in the public that do want to comment. We do have a sign-up sheet in the back as well, but we do have other people in the public that would like to comment. What is the committee's recommendation, anything? Do you want to continue today until we get done, or do you want to look at next Tuesday morning again at 10? I kind of like the idea of going next week. I hate to say that, but there are a couple people that want to speak, and I would like to hear what they have to say. I think they bring some value to the table and certainly don't want to discount what the citizens have to say. So, I mean, if we could go another 45 minutes today and get it done, that would be fine. But if we have to cut people short, I'd rather wait. Anybody else? Any other thoughts? Everybody in favor of continuing then? Okay, well, we'll continue today and hear from Mr. Clark and then Mr. Stovall. and I'll turn the chair over to Council Member Lane and if we don't get done today, we'll plan on next Tuesday at 10 a.m. to proceed forward on our discussions. And also, if anyone else would like to speak, there's a sign-up sheet in the back of the room. You can fill in. We do have one speaker already signed up. It's been brought up to me and I'll turn it over to Council Member Lane. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Stennett. Okay, I will, I think I will call Mr. Clark next. And since we do have a short time frame, if you could summarize your comments and then be open more to questions, I would appreciate it. And let me just say that Mr. Clark is the president and CEO of LexArts, which is our local arts organization. Thank you, Mr. Clark. Thank you. Pleased to be here. be here. I'm primarily here to answer any questions that you might have with regard to the Downtown Arts Center and Arts Place and how LexArts is involved in those facilities. I really don't have any general comments other than knowing that this has been an action item that's long overdue in terms of talking about the facilities that LFU-CG supports. And I am fully prepared to participate in any working group where we might achieve cost effectiveness and become more streamlined. But I feel that it is that the Lyric could offer a good opportunity to expand our arts and cultural venues. There is a role and a niche for it to play. the more integrated it is into other operations supported by LFUCG, the better it will be. Mr. Clark, could you perhaps for the viewers sort of summarize what LexArts does, what your annual budget is, what organizations you work with, just to give them an overview of that? LexArts is the United Arts Fund and Arts Council for Lexington, Fayette Urban Government. Our operating budget is $1.5 million. Of that, $350,000 comes from LFUCG, most of which is then distributed to the various arts groups like the Philharmonic, Children's Theater, the Art League. And then several community arts grants this year were distributing more than $120,000 in grants to small and large groups throughout Fayette County. We operate Arts Place, which does not receive any operating subsidy from LFUCG. Basically, it's a break-even operation. Our annual operating expenses there are about $132,000, which is paid for through our renters, such as the Philharmonic Lexington Ballet. We have a number of per-use contracts, and that building is occupied probably about 80% of the year with activities. Downtown Arts Center receives a $115,000 operating subsidy. It's called a management fee. Of all the rent that we raise, 100% of it is returned to LFUCG. So this year we're anticipating to return about $30,000 in rent. Now, the Downtown Arts Center, to be clear, has three different leases. One is for the Ann Tower Gallery, one is for Alfalfa, and then the other is LexArts Operation. And I'm unaware of the revenue that's generated from those two other leases that supports that building. Also, we operate in very, and this is one reason why I think it would be very helpful to have some sort of working group look at the different cultural facilities and the different agreements that have been structured. Arts Place, as I said, is a break-even operation for us, receiving no subsidy. but the Downtown Arts Center, we have this management fee and our returning funds to LFUCG but LFUCG is providing the utilities and maintenance to operate that building and I know the Art League is at Loudoun House which is under the Parks Department they operate on a different set of circumstances same thing as the Carnegie Center for Literacy and also the Kentucky Theater which is in an LFUCG building We all have different agreements and different ways of operating. So this might provide some opportunity to seek clarity and seek ways in which we could coordinate or collaborate on different cost areas. So I have a question for Mr. Clark. Mr. Beard. Jim, what about expanding that to other performing arts entities of one form or another, like the Philharmonic or the Children's Center or whatever, that would be able to give accounting support and some of those types of things, ticket sales, all of that? that could be spread over a broader spectrum of entities as opposed to them hiring that done singularly and maybe paying up for doing that. Could that be put on the table also, in other words? Well, I think what we would look at is the different ways they're functioning. The Philharmonic primarily performs at the Singletary Center. Children's Theater is operating out of their own facility and then quite a few groups use the Lexington Opera House which is part of Lexington Center so there's different box offices that are involved. We do operate a centralized box office at the Downtown Arts Center which this past year more than 19 arts organizations use those services generating about $226,000 in ticket sales. Up that about 10% comes back to LexArts, which covers the cost of operating the box office. Now Singletary Center has their own box office for the events that are there, which does not make sense to try and coordinate those two activities because they're so uniquely different. And then Lexington Center has their own arrangements with Ticketmaster that governs Rupp Arena and the Opera House. So there's different models out there, and it would make sense that those probably maintain discrete operations. Certainly getting a better understanding of how those either dovetail or compete would be a good thing. I'm thinking more of the types of things that are not venue-dependent. like, again, accounting and things of that sort? Well, I think we could explore that, but I think you would find that for most of the larger arts organizations, they would probably need to function with their own bookkeepers or management team. But I think in the case when you have something like a rental facility, like the Downtown Arts Center, which is very close to the Morton Theater in Athens, Georgia, that what you would find is that there would probably be opportunities to share expenses in terms of a technical director, a front-of-house manager, and also a facilities manager. So I think in those cases where you're operating venues, that there's more likelihood to have some excess capacity from one organization that could be shared with another one. Thank you, Jim. Anybody else have a question? Then I have an additional question for you. Could you explain how some of the individual arts groups are organized, where their sources of revenues come, just in a generic way, not specifically any one organization, in addition to grants and how they raise their money for operations? Well, increasingly, organizations that do not rely on tuition, such as the ballet that runs its school, Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras, rely on sort of a tuition-based revenue stream. The other more traditional performing and visual arts groups like the Art League, Children's Theater, Actors Guild, rely heavily on sponsorships that are either season sponsors or event sponsors, and then they do some general fundraising, but that is the minority at this point, because they rely heavily on LexArts, especially the larger organizations, for their general operating support, which is unrestricted revenue to them. So sponsorships is a growing area, and then individual ticket sales is another. And the one thing, when you're looking across the country, the norm is for a nonprofit performing arts group to be about 60 percent subsidized, 40 percent generated from earned income, or at least that used to be until current economic situation. Here that is flip-flopped a little. We find that most of the groups are generating more earned income and rely less on subsidies. Okay. Thank you. I'm going to ask now that Mr. Stovall come up, but could you hang around in case there's some additional questions? Go ahead, Mr. Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Clark, you talked about some of the different opportunities for efficiencies. LFCCG just created a new facilities management group. And I'm wondering if, you know, in the past when that wasn't here, it made me make sense to have facilities management done on site. But it seems to me that that's another opportunity that we can bring in-house and put underneath that umbrella. I would think so, yes. Okay. In our case, our facilities manager has two duties. One is taking care of the facility and client relations, but the other is generating earned income through rentals. So we would have to have somebody involved on that side for us generating rentals, both at Arts Place and the Downtown Arts Center. Which brings me to another question of when Councilman Beard was talking about those efficiencies in terms of the back office staff, does it make sense that we have if we consolidated facilities management it sounds like some people are sharing hats wearing different hats inside the organization that maybe the rental aspect of it could be done under an umbrella as well yes and I think on the technical side the rentals and even in case of marketing more so than development there might be ways of sharing that and if I might digress for a second there's been some talk over recent years about the need for a large performing arts or arts center. And I think what we have here is a variety of arts and cultural and heritage venues that if operated more in concert with one another could actually achieve that same purpose. And that would be accomplished through shared marketing opportunities and achieving certain efficiencies with the back office staff. My question would be, and I think you're going to bring the consultant up in just a second, and you're probably going to ask him about efficiencies as well. My question would be is, I agree with Council Member James that we don't want to slow down the progress of this project, but is there a way that we can introduce this conversation about the efficiencies into that work group in a way that we can gain some of the efficiencies sooner rather than later, but also at the same time not delay the Lyric moving forward? I would hope that Mr. Clark would be one of the key components of the work group because of his expertise here. Well, and I think that could be achieved where we focus first on the needs and development of the Lyric. Right. But I think from that will be information that will benefit the other operating venues. And I think I just wanted to point out that last week I had a very positive conversation with one of the potential users, which is the Lexington Singers. that talked about the need for a space like 550 seats. And what they were excited about was right now, generally, they'll have one concert at the Singletary Center, which holds 1,400 people. But they would much prefer to have three evenings of events. It's more exciting. It gives it time to get word of mouth out, to generate excitement in the community. I think that there's some real opportunities that way to create a pretty good performance schedule with key groups. And I think in conversations that I had with Susan Hill, music could be one of the better uses for the lyric in terms of how it's constructed now in its acoustic properties. So I think that there's some opportunities there. We also know that Singletary Center has become increasingly more difficult to rent just because of the growth of programs at the university that is precluding outside groups from using the space. Thank you, Mr. Clark. I want to ask Howard Stovall to come up. Mr. Stovall is one of the owners of the Kentucky Theater operation. And I think if you don't mind just starting out by explaining your relationship as a tenant in the building and with the Urban County Government, if you don't mind. Thank you so much, and I apologize. You've had to come back a couple of times. We appreciate your sticking with us. That's okay. My comments are brief. I did just want to kind of outline the way the Kentucky Theater operates, which is a completely different model than anything we're talking about here. With Kentucky Theater, as I think most of you know, LFUCG owns the facilities, maintains the basic structural facility, but much more like a landlord-tenant relationship, 100% of operational costs, payroll, utilities, advertising, everything is borne by the management company. We've been there since April of 92. My partners, Annalise Corsoni and Fred Mills, have been operating it. LFUCG gets a percentage of revenues between 5% and 8% of every dollar that goes through comes to the city regardless of whether we operate that month or that year at a profit or a loss. And frankly, the years of the loss are about equal to the years we've had an operating profit. As far as, I did want to just make sure that any statements I'm making are strictly my opinion. The Kentucky Theater Group has no position or opinion on anything that's going on with the Lyric. From some things I've heard here this morning, a couple of things that strike a chord with me is the full-time staffing seems very high. We run a seven-day-a-week, 365-day-a-year facility with three full-time employees and about a dozen hourly part-time employees as needed. also I would just caution we very occasionally will produce a concert or event other than the films ourselves it is a very high risk venture if you can get someone to come in what has worked for us we charge a base rental for the theater we charge a service charge for selling tickets we make it up on concessions That's the revenue generator. On a, for instance, a typical Tuesday night when we're playing films, we may very well make $250 or $300 total box office concession and everything. If that same night we have a concert that sells 800 seats, we may do $2,500 in concession sales. It takes the risk out of it for us. The only risk we have if the concert bombs is that we're only going to sell $500 worth of concessions, which is still going to be better than we would have done otherwise. Also, when it comes to some of the dollars that you're talking about for some of these big-name acts, you've got to remember that it's a 500-seat theater. If you're paying $25,000 for the musicians, figure another 20% to 25% in incidental expenses, including advertising it, your lighting people, all of this. You're going to be hard-pressed, figure that you're going to have to give away 15% of your tickets for radio station and sponsor promotions. You've got less than 500 tickets. you're going to have a $50-plus ticket. We found that once, you know, unless it's a huge name, once you break the $40 barrier, you end up with a half-full house. These are just my thoughts, and I'd be happy to answer any questions that anyone has. Mr. Stovall, could you comment a little bit about Wood Songs? Because they are in your theater on a weekly basis. Tell us a little bit about that if you could. Okay, yeah. The Wood Songs radio show is put on by Michael Jonathan, who also promotes some of the major concerts we have. Our arrangement with him is that he has the smaller state theater, which seats about 350 people, uses that every Monday night, about 48 Monday nights a year. There's a minimal rental involved with that, and we take the concession business that night. But that has been successful in bringing, most weeks there's 350 people in the audience, so it is bringing people downtown. I would also, just to touch briefly on the parking issue, I would encourage council to spend extra money up front if necessary to obtain parking. I think you'll get it back in revenues at a later date. If you have to spend a quarter million dollars to buy some lots and throw some asphalt down, you're going to sell that much more in the way of ticket sales in a short period of time than you would if, you know. It's an ongoing problem. That's why we don't, at Kentucky, we rarely have anything during the daytime during weekdays. People can't get there. They're not going to come. Do you have questions to anybody? Okay. Thank you very much for your presentation. Now we have a council member, former council member Dick DeCamp is on the sign up sheet to make a comment. And welcome Mr. ex-council member. Thank you very much. It's a little different being on this side, but I welcome it. And my name is Dick DeCamp. I live at 644 Montclair Drive. I follow the development of the Arts District before and after the Van Snyder Building demolition. I understand the city's obligations as put forth by the 1997 Memorandum of Understanding. I would like to add that 25 years ago, over 25 years ago, I helped create a plan for a black history museum at the Dudley House in Dudley Park. It was not successful, but I had an interest many, many years ago for a black history museum. As a former member of the council and a taxpaying citizen of Lexington, I have several observations concerning the Lyric Theater project. After reading the business and programming plan developed by AMS, Although interesting, I don't feel very confident about the conclusions. I would put most of it in the category of guesstimates, and without a feasibility phase of the study, it gives me little comfort. LexArts, of which I was a board member for nine years, was not at the table of the development of this plan. If this plan is only a suggestion, then I implore the council to have our local arts professional in charge of a final business and management plan. I do not believe the lyric can stand alone. It was noted by Mrs. James. This city needs to look at all the arts properties, the old courthouse, the downtown arts center, an arts place, the Lexington Center, and devise a plan by which all these entities can collaborate and create the underpinnings of a long-range and strong arts and cultural program for the city. Any plan should include LexArts in the U.K. and others. By doing so, I believe we can reduce all expenses, business programming and management. Again, the lyric cannot and should not stand alone. The last thing this city needs is another basketball museum. As a taxpayer, I am sincerely alarmed that the Council would approve a $6 million bond issue when we have no idea what this building project will cost. I strongly believe that the bond issue should be tabled only until construction drawings are completed and cost estimates are obtained, so that everyone will know what the costs are up front. If the project capital costs come in over $6 million, then I think we'd have to need to adjust the size and scope of the project. We must have transparency. That's been one of the big problems in several incidents lately. transparency, and I think we're getting ourselves into this problem again. We must have transparency now before we obligate funds during this most serious financial crisis we are in. You know, presently, we give LexArts $350,000 to distribute among the possibility of 30 arts groups. In scenario number three, which we heard today, the report says the responsibility of this government for the Lyric alone would be $345,000. So just begin to study and think about those issues. In reference to the date of completion and possible penalties, I feel confident that could be negotiated in good faith effort if it is shown that a good faith effort was being put forth by our city. We should probably be paying penalties right now for not having funded the completion of the downtown art center. It's not completed. Third floor is not completed. Right across the street on Main Street. I cannot emphasize enough that we need to finish that important art facility before we do anything else. In view of all this, to be fair to all taxpayers in Lexington, let's table the bond issue until we know what the construction costs will be. When we know what we can accomplish within a certain budget, we can then do the proper program and management studies before we move too quickly and waste funds, which are so badly needed for all aspects of running our city. Let's be honest. Let's be fair. And among the most important thing, let's be smart. This way we'll have a Lyric Theater project which will be viable and an asset to our city without wasting taxpayers' money. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. DeCamp. Does anybody else wish to speak? Ms. Member Lane. Council Member James. I just wanted to respond to something. a lot of, just to clarify, the reimbursement resolution or the resolution that's on our docket for March the 12th is to move forward with being able to do the bid documents and put the project out for bid. The council will have the opportunity to have, and the citizens will have the opportunity to see what those projections of those costs are. So I wanted to make sure that folks watching know that the council will have to approve any type of, whenever that bid comes back, there will be something that comes forward before council, and council will have the opportunity to vote up or down however they feel at that time. And council member, or former council member, the camp is correct. If that comes in over $6 million, that will be a conversation that needs to occur. If it's less than, that would be a conversation that needs to occur as well, a more positive one probably than the one over $6 million. So I wanted to clarify for folks watching that the resolution does not mean that they'll see bulldozers and folks over there working. It means that the documents will go out for bid, and then we'll get those bids back. The council will have to vote on to move forward with that based on an actual amount. So we're not, you know, blindfolded voting to move ahead with this. We'll still see those numbers. Okay. I just want to be sure. I wasn't sure of that, and I think the public needs to know that. Yes. I think I'm glad you brought that up. So my understanding is that we'd only be voting to go ahead with the documents that make it possible to get an estimate on what this would cost. That's correct. And this would not obligate anybody to any amount of bond issuing at all. No. Is that correct? Is that correct, Shea? Is that clear? And maybe I'm misstating it, but I know that we will see this. I want to be sure, because I think that is a problem if not. Okay. In between two council members, I'm kind of nervous. The reimbursement resolution is to allow us to start spending the $6 million on costs associated with construction. The only immediate cost we would have would be the documents that we would have to prepare to go to bid. I think that's approximately about $10,000. Susan Hill told me she met with Brian Markham in purchasing. In order to any money we, the resolution says any money we spend would be reimbursed through the sale of bonds. That's assuming that we get back bids that we agree with, we can agree upon, and that we decide to move forward with construction. So you are correct that before we actually sell bonds and or both, actually, start construction, the council would have to, again, authorize us to enter into a contract to begin construction for the specified price. And then at a later date, we would sell the bonds whenever we would need the cash, and debt service would come later. The reimbursement resolution is asking us to start moving forward with the process. It specifically says to start spending money for the purpose of the Lyric Theater. It can be reworded, but it's certainly an indication to us, the administration, that it's the intent of the council to move forward with the project unless otherwise stated. And so we don't want to move forward into the going-to-bid process or anything else if the project's not going to move forward. It would be a waste of money and time. And so that's why we came before you with a reimbursement resolution like we do with other projects before we start spending money on documents. So you're kind of both right is what I'm saying. It's a procedural thing that urban county government does that you all are aware of to allow us to start spending against the money or using general fund money. But before we actually sell bonds, we'd have to get your approval. And before we begin construction, we'd have to get your approval. Okay, thank you for clarifying that. That does help. It does help, but, you know, the worst-case scenario, this would come in at some astronomical amount. Well, let's not think the worst-case. Let's think the best-case. But we have to because we're realists about everything that we do up here because we represent the people of this community. Absolutely. So we have to look at the best and the worst, Ms. James. Yeah. And I'm just saying that if this, you know, we want to be sure that there's no obligation until we really have the facts in front of us. And I think that that has been clarified today, and I think this is a very important part of this whole process. Sure. Thank you, Shea, for clarifying that. I do think it does bring clarity to the folks that are watching that thinks that people will be over there working. this will come before Council again for approval for that payment of those bond dollars, which will have to happen before construction can begin. So thank you. Thank you. Council Member Martin. Ms. Rabel, I have a question. Under the current reimbursement resolution, if the project, after it was bidded out, if it came back at $6, $5, or $7 million, are we obligated to spend the $6, $5, or $7 million? I do not believe so. Again, not a bond expert either. I think it just says it's the intent of urban county government to spend the dollars for construction. But before we would even begin construction, we would have to come back and ask your approval for a contract for a certain amount, which would stop the project or allow it to move forward based on the price. And the bond issue requires a separate vote and approval by the council? I'm so glad all my backup team is here with me today. Does anybody know the answer that's on council? I believe it does. I think before we actually sell bonds, we come back to you with a bond issue. So by approving the reimbursement resolution, we're not writing sort of a blank check into the future. We've got limitations based on the projected costs now. And if, for example, when the costs were bid out and if they came up much higher, we would have an opportunity to reexamine that. We wouldn't be committed to the much higher amount. That's correct, because the only time we would be committed is if we actually went, if we sold the bonds. But we're not selling bonds yet because we don't have all of the cost estimates back. I think it's something that Irving County government has done in the past with the intent of selling bonds to start spending money on whatever the costs are associated with the project. You can use the general fund dollars, and then you sell the bonds to repay the general fund. In this situation, I don't anticipate us spending millions of dollars. It's a matter of about approximately $10,000 for the first phase of going to bid, which we could take out of some existing funds we have right now. We would not have to sell bonds to cover $10,000 in bid documents. You would have to approve us. By approving the contract with the construction company, we would then have to know where the money is coming from. And this reimbursement resolution says bonds. But we're going to know the scope of the project before we commit ourselves. Is that accurate? I think that's if it's the will of the council to know the scope of the project, then you will, yes. I can't speak for all of you, but I would assume that is the case, yes. Just to this point. Okay. Okay. Council Member Beard, please, sir. Thank you, Chair. Is there not some way to do this in baby steps and introduce a resolution to bid the project without doing the reimbursement resolution and subject to what we find out from the bids? Obviously, if the bids are below $6 million and below, we would go forward and have discussion again, but at a later time about the reimbursement resolution, and if it's above the $6 million, well, we probably would have the same discussion, but maybe the resolution wouldn't have passed until the discussion was over. And I don't know who I'm asking a question. I don't know who I'm asking it to. I might like to comment on that if you don't mind. Sure. Shay, maybe I'll just present that to you and you can pass that on to whomsomever. It would clarify this. It does look like a blank check at this point. And I don't think that's the intent of anybody up here around the horseshoe. but we do need to find out where we are. We don't know whether we're at $5 million or $6 million or $9 million. And we're wasting a lot of energy and time until we find that out. We just must find that out first, I think. I think that suggestion is a fine one. You know, our intent, again, is to move forward to the next step and the next step is to bid for construction to get some numbers back. The reason we brought forward a reimbursement resolution is that's the way things tend to happen around here with capital construction projects so we don't have to continually come back and hash out conversations over again and again. I think in this circumstance, you know, if we want to just get a resolution from the council to, say, move forward with the process into the next phase, which is the construction documents. I personally wouldn't be opposed to that, but I think we have to recognize that, again, we're going to have to come back and have all of these conversations. Again, the council's going to have to make a decision at some point whether we move forward, and I know that's going to be based on the numbers that come back. Of course, we have two different things going on. We have the business plan, and we have construction. And so the administration's intent here is to get an indication from the council about how you would wish us to proceed as it relates to construction. Well, we can't proceed at all until we have some – we narrow down what our exposure might be as far as the amount is concerned, and we have to settle that. And I think the contractors, at least in the climate we have right now, will probably be worth their effort to go ahead and bid on it. Correct. So I see no downside to taking that route first and getting that off the table or on the table firmly and then go forward with the reimbursement resolution afterwards. I would not object to that. and if a council member wants to make that resolution, I think that's fine. Well, I'd like to make a motion that that's what we do. All right, any second on that? Just jump all over it, folks. Okay. That motion fails. All right, Mr. Myers, you're next. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to start where we just left off. We have to understand we have not written a blank check. We have voted on a $6 million reimbursement resolution. That's the limit. Nothing can go past that without it coming back to the body, this council, to vote for that. So we have not written a blank check. People have to understand that. what's blank about it or what's in question about it or still open is what the actual number is going to be. If this thing comes back at $5.5 million, we voted for a $6 million bond resolution, then, like you said, the assumption is we move forward. It's, you know, a half million dollars under what we approved. So we haven't written a blank check. I think that's very, very important to understand here. And also I would say that I appreciate that you were trying to do something to keep the ball rolling, but I would caution against, if this comes up at a later date, moving in that direction because then what we're doing is looking at this one specific project and saying we're going to change the way our government functions only for this project. The resolution that the administration has brought forward is the way this government operates on all capital projects and it's done that way for decades. There's nothing different about this project. But everybody's getting, like, wrapped up and trying to look at this thing under a microscope when all we have to do is continue with the normal processes of government. And I do want to say, and I know Mr. Camp's going to come up here and probably shout back at me, but I would never respond to what a citizen would come up and say at the microphone, except for in a situation where a citizen comes up in the auspices of being a previous council member, and that council member actually was on the council when this project was started out. And I would just say that you brought up two issues that perplexed me, Mr. DeCamp. And one, you said you talked about transparency. And I don't understand what it is that you think that this body is doing that's not transparent. And so if you do want to come up and clear that up, that'd be fine. Before you clear that up, before you say anything, though, I would say that you were on this body. When you talk about transparency and you talk about the airport board and the things that were going on there, You were a person that was on the airport board and actually voted against having an auditor come in and look at what was going on with the airport and the airport board. So when you talk about this body doing things that are not transparent, that really concerns me. The second thing that concerned me was when you talked about how we represent the public and we need to be fair and all those things, you sat on this body, you voted for that $6 million bond issue for this project. What changed in you about your vote back then and your position on this issue now, You certainly have the right to change your opinion. But to sit up here and sort of chastise this body as if we're doing things that are unethical and non-transparent and not fair, you use that word as well, and not smart and not responsible to representing the citizens, once again perplexes me because you sat on this body, you've heard all the history of this project from day one, and you voted for the project. So I'm going to open the floor. You can have at me if you want to. You have opened the floor, Mr. Myers. I think you're getting a little paranoid. My transparency remark was exactly what we said today, is knowing up front what it's going to cost before we go forward. And it looks like that has been resolved. So that was my transparency remark. And if you think I'm going to get into the airport debacle with you at this point, I only said at the time, I only think remark I will say is that I felt that the state was covering the audit, which I think they have done an excellent job doing, and that's what I supported. And I was not against an audit of the airport. I thought that it should come from the state, did come from the state, and those are the results that we've got. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Blues. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chair. Getting back to Council Member Beard's motion, the reason that I'm content with the fact that it did not go forward is not because I thought it was a bad thought or a bad motion, but that we might want to hold it for now, because I think that the issue that has been raised and which prompted that motion was that we want to be able to explore our options going forward. And the best way to coordinate, on the one hand, the construction bid process and subsequent decisions based thereon, and also the business plan deliberations that will come from the working group. So I just wanted to say that there may be a place for that idea, for that motion at some future discussion. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Mr. Palouse. Please, the Council, I would like to make one short comment. We're almost complete with our meeting. I just wanted to remind our viewers, people in the audience in our Budget and Finance Committee that we put this matter into the committee to review the operating expenses because when we purchase a property, we build it. Not only do we have to pay the debt service on it, but we have other obligations depending upon how that transaction is structured. And, you know, we have not singled out the Lyric Theater. We also have an emergency operations center pending. I also made a motion in that regard to look at the long-term operating cost and the impact. Because when we purchase a property or build a property, not only do we pay for that, but we incur all the operating expenses. This is a huge liability for our taxpayers, and that's why I think the transparency of seeing what those costs are are important before we make our final vote on the matter. So that's sort of where I'm coming from. Having said that, I would like to say that I do support the Memorandum of Understanding. I believe that we do need to do the Lyric Theater, but we need to do it in a smart, cost-effective way that treats the taxpayers and the people that use the facility as cost-effectively as possible. That's my comment. Is there any other comment? Anybody else want to speak? Do I have a motion for suspending the meeting? Second. All in favor say aye. Thank you. Beno Nelson! Beno Nelson! Thank you.