Hello Everyone,
Here is my situation, I am on the board of my local CT and we are considering moving from a rented space to a permanent theater. Right now we have a couple of storage sheds where we keep our flats and stage sections etc. and we rent a convention room with a curtain and lighting system from the park district for our performances. We are having a meeting next month to decide whether to begin actively searching for a building to mortgage and make our permanent theater, or continue with our present arrangement. I am looking for any insights, opinions, or even cautionary tales from people who have been with a theater through a move into owning their performance space. Thanks to anyone who can help.

PS. I'm posting this more than once so please feel free to ignore it if you see it again.

A theatre I once worked with was actually given a space, compliments of the owner of the building.  (Unit in a strip mall.)  They found an architect to work gratis, had lots of donated materials and time, and have made it into quite a nice little theatre.  Since the space is now theirs to do with what they will, they've started classes 6 days a week (voice, acting, dance, etc.) and are doing very well.  The revenue from the classes more than pays the utility bills.  If you have the people, you could always offer classes to cover part of the costs.

Having been involved in a few venue acquisitions & refurbishment’s in my time.
The one that stands out was in a regional country town. The group had been going for 30 odd years or so. Using an inadequate heritage building ,on a peppercorn lease from the City.
As they had transformed it into a workable theatre, they were finally crowed out, by other community group usage, to the point that they struggled to get the use of their facilities & resources.
The upshot was the City flogged it off to a shopping centre developer & they had 6 months to get out.
Out of desperation they rented a 2 storey warehouse, office & storage building for a while.
They found out the owner wanted to sell the building, so they fronted their bank & worked out a deal to purchase the building free hold. The deal they worked out was to put a small deposit of a few grand on the building, to secure it & only pay the bank interest on the loans principle sum in monthly increments.
Which gave them a lot of breathing space to develop the venue & carry on.
However they came up with the old idea of getting donations for the cost of buying the building, by flogging off the venues bricks, with a buy a brick fund.
They notionally picked a figure out of the air of the total amount of bricks in the building as being 250 000, there was no actual survey estimate of the number, it was just a target figure based on the principal sum of $200 00 owing.
Over 18 months they had sold 50% more $1bricks than the target amount.
They paid out the bank & the building had realised more than a 10% increase in value in the mean time, so they were quids in!
Mind you they could have came agutza, but it all worked out.
It was just a pity they hadn’t planned out the venue properly, but that’s all another story!
There was talk of each person signing each brick who had donated, but this was impractical & could have been embarrassing, as they sold more than was in the building.
That was back in the 80’s & they are still going strong, hiring out their vast wardrobe of costumes & the venue it’s self.   

This is a HUGE decision with more things to consider than the normal community theatre board can handle in one meeting.  (If your board is anything like those I have seen in action, they can quibble ad nauseum about the most mundane and often meaningless things!)  The first suggestion I will make is to take your time with this decision and make sure your organization is ready for it.  If/When you make this move, you will need as close to total support as you can get from your board, your participants, your audiences, and your coummunity.

In theory, I like the idea of a community theatre owning its own place.   I know of one very small theatre (they were something between a community theatre and a professionally-oriented theatre; they wanted to pay people and get an equity contract, but they didn't have the money to pay anybody!) that began in a small, 75 seat space.  They would sell out their shows most of the time.  Part of their excellence came with the intimacy of their space - rented space.  Then, the landlord, another much larger performing arts organization, needed the space.  The theatre found another space, but it was almost like a deal with the devil.  They moved to a brand new 300-seat theatre that was built for music and not for theatre.  Everything changed.  All of a sudden they had to make a lot more money.  They had to make artistic concessions to appeal to a larger audience.  They lost their intimacy and, as far as I was concerned, they lost the identity that separated them from everyone else.  I think, today, they are a very different organization than they were when they first started.  Not better.  Maybe not worse.  Just different.  I'm really not sure what the move did for them. 

Well, the point of all this is having your own space can not only prevent organizational nomadism, but will also give you more control over organizational identity (in today's marketing parlance, it's called "branding").  Never underestimate the impact of space on ticket sales and artistic integrity. 

Here are just a few knee-jerk questions/issues/concerns that come to my mind in a move from renter to homeowner:

Costs:  The biggee -- money!  You're not just adding a mortgage, you're also adding insurance costs, maintenance costs, utility cost (whether you're using the building or not), security systems, repairs, upkeep, and on and on. 

Location:  "Build it and they will come" is a great catch-phrase for a movie, but it's a very risky marketing plan.  Make sure you are moving to a location that doesn't have hidden (or even open) obstacles to attendence like an unsafe neighborhood, hard to find area, inadequate parking, there are no right hand turns allowed so the only way to get to your theatre is through a series of left hand turns and then only when you come from the northeast direction, etc., etc., etc.

Adaptation/Renovations:  Multiply any and all quotes and estimates for building adaptations and renovations by at least 25% and then add the typical 10% contingency.  Maybe I'm exaggerating, but the real point here is that you need to have the financial support of your community to effectively pull this off.  The best way to do a capital campaign is to line up as much money ahead of time in a very quiet way.  When you have gotten commitments for at least 50% of your expected costs, then move on to a very public capital campaign.  Which raises another category related to this and costs --

Fundraising:  Does your organization have the wherewithal to do the necessary fundraising.  Sure, you can borrow money, but the less debt you have the better off you'll be and the higher the liklihood of long term success.

Another consideration:  there are times when owning in partnership with another organization can help spread the risk.    Maybe there's another performing arts organization that is having the same discussion?  An orchestra, a dance company, even a community arts center.  Yes, you make some concessions with a partnership, but you can not only share the risks and costs, but you can also create a dynamic creative exchange that might not otherwise come about. 

That's enough from me. 

Yours always,

Kibitzer