One year from now, North Texas will be preparing to celebrate the opening of the new Dallas Center for the Performing Arts: four new “landmark” venues, including a new theater and opera house adjacent to the Dallas Museum of Art, the Meyerson Symphony Center, and the Nasher Sculpture Center.
| HOW TO SAVE THE WORLD IN FOUR (SORT OF) EASY STEPS – by Dave Moore |
| Entities like Dallas Summer Musicals, the Kalita Humphreys Theater, and the Museum of Science & Nature all operate as nonprofit ventures. According to the Center for Nonprofit Management in Dallas, here are some key things to consider before plunging into a nonprofit venture of your own. |
| 1) Conduct exhaustive market research to make sure you’re not duplicating services. One means of searching is through the free search engine www.guidestar.org. Or good old-fashioned shoe leather. If there’s a need out there, there’s a strong chance someone else has already done something about it. |
| 2) Determine your mission statement. This might sound simple, but it will set the ground rules for the types of activity your organization can pursue for its entire life. The mission statement also will determine the geographic reach of your organization (most are local). |
| 3) Surround yourself with good people. Make sure you’ve chosen a board of directors with the same interests but a variety of skills. And get some good hired hands (a bookkeeper, a marketer, a program manager, and a volunteer coordinator). |
| 4) Prepare to be schooled. The Center for Nonprofit Management in Dallas offers an introductory $55 class that helps the curious decide if they should pull the trigger. More advanced classes follow. |
When it’s said and done, Dallas will be home to the largest continuous arts district in the country—a virtual mecca for attracting business, tourists, and conventions, not to mention a cornerstone in the revitalization of downtown Dallas. Fundraisers for the center can boast that 95 percent of the cash to finance the $338 million project came from private fundraising.
The only specter looming is the fear that Dallas may be throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater by doing away with the “old” in a mad rush for the “new.” There’s already a perception we’ve done a poor job, at least before the last decade, of preserving our old buildings in favor of knocking them down for the shiny and new. And now we may be setting ourselves up for a repeat performance.
Take Dallas Summer Musicals, for example. For years, it’s brought Broadway musicals and theatergoers to the Music Hall at Fair Park. In 2006, Dallas voters approved an astounding $84 million bond program aimed at restoring and revitalizing Fair Park. Dallas Area Rapid Transit will open its Fair Park station right in front of the Music Hall entrance at this time next year. Yet, the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts will compete directly with Fair Park by also offering Broadway musicals, after a deal with Dallas Summer Musicals to leave Fair Park fell through.
The Dallas Theater Center company also will begin performing in the new venue downtown, leaving behind the Kalita Humphreys Theater on Turtle Creek, one of only three theaters designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Certainly the Kalita Humphreys is in need of renovations, but as of now it will sit empty.
Then there’s the decision by the Museum of Science & Nature at Fair Park to move its primary location downtown to Victory. The Fair Park location will be a secondary venue. Good for Victory and downtown, but how does this happen at a time when millions of our tax dollars are going to preserve and revitalize Fair Park? More importantly, what will become of our historic jewels? Where’s the strategy?
Veletta Lill, a former member of the City Council who was recently appointed Arts District coordinator by Mayor Tom Leppert, is also an adviser for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. She’s been a champion for both the arts and for architectural preservation. She has the right idea on the attitude we must take. “It is important that, as the architectural landscape evolves, that we re-purpose and/or revitalize those buildings we leave,” Lill says. “We should not think of the opening of new venues as an either/or decision.”
Whether it’s Fair Park or any of our other historic venues, Dallas needs to do a better job of aligning its efforts to build the new while preserving the old. It makes little sense to raise millions in private donations only to compete with millions in tax dollars. It’s a discussion that needs to take place in the first act of planning—not after the curtain falls on the hardest act to follow, our architectural treasures.
