September 07, 2013
Saturday

Letter to the Editor,

I addressed the Borough Assembly Tuesday night about the fact that the Legislative Lobbying committee ignored the Ketchikan Performing Arts Center project last week, and I thought the greater community might be interested in what I had to say.   It didn't make sense that we were their #1 and the community's #4 last year, but this year we weren't even going to be numbered at all.

After last year's funding difficulties, we did what we felt was the responsible thing, and reduced our request this year. We cut back our ask, and upped our own ante for the Capital Campaign. There's not much more we can do. Rasmuson is waiting on the sidelines for us to get the rest of our funding before they will even want to talk to us. We're hoping to get $1.2 million from them, but it's never going to happen if we don't get more than that from someone else first. They won't be first, and they won't be most. We need to get more from City/State/Borough to even qualify. This is a public infrastructure project. It's owned by a public non-profit that is serving the community, and if public entities won't support it, neither will Rasmuson. KGB already has $500 thousand invested in the project, and it didn't make sense for them to back away now.

I told them how I was downtown the other day, and I heard someone say, "Oh don't go that way. There's nothing up there." Ouch! The Fireside/Elks used to be the happening place to be. Downtown used to be the place to be. Thousands of people get off the boat every day and see banks of jewelry stores. Well, they can get jewelry stores in the Caribbean. Why would they even want to spend more time in Ketchikan when that's the face we put on? A vibrant art district in what was a nearly vacant part of town. Now, THAT could be a draw!

With this performing arts center, we can make Main St, Main St again. The Assembly proclaimed it themselves; Ketchikan is a big Arts town. It's one of the top 100 arts communities in the United States. We should be telling everyone. Creating an Arts Corridor on Main St will help to tell that story. With a visible Art community, we can become an Arts destination. That's the kind of thing overnight visitors are interested in. That's the kind of thing that is not affected by the weather or the time of year.

We already have the Arts Council with its Main St Gallery right across the street. With the Performing Arts Center bringing theater, dancing, singing, band concerts in that old eye-sore (recently spruced up a bit), that street would come alive.
There's even talk of putting an artist in residency program in the old fire station next door. Can't you just see someone carving a totem pole or a group of painters set up in the garage there and classes in the rooms above? Can't you see a part of downtown Ketchikan alive again, ALL YEAR LONG? What do you think that's going to do for the local businesses in the area? It's a perfect set-up.
Of course, a wonderful side effect is going to be jobs and added industry, but the REAL purpose, that is even MORE wonderful. Think about it, how many activities do you know of that the entire family can be involved in AS EQUALS, that will stimulate the mind, the body and the soul?

The Rec Center & Pool have a deservedly respected place in this community, but competitive exercise isn't for everyone. Through dance, we see awkward young children turn into confident young men and women. In the theater, a handicapped individual sitting rocking in the corner staring at the floor, can blossom and take his place on center stage with a speaking part! Singing and playing an instrument can make a small person feel like a giant and take an audience soaring with them. Performing arts improve quality of life. They help us endure our stressful working lives, and long dreary winters. They keep people in Ketchikan. That is a fact.

Thousands of our citizens already benefit from the performing arts in this town, but we are suffering with inadequate rehearsal and performance space, and we want to bring meaningful life to MORE people, and draw MORE people to our community.

Bringing this old building back to life, will do so much. Right now, she's on life support, EXPENSIVE life support, and she's in great need of a heart transplant. She's full of big wide open beautiful space, UNUSABLE space, until we can get mechanical in there. We're heating 21,000 sq feet with box heaters, and we need to get her fixed up and back into productive society. We got her on the priority list last year but something happened. Somebody pulled the plug, and we're giving her mouth to mouth.  Everybody knows that can't go on forever.

Right now, thanks to the work done by the Borough Assembly and our legislative team last year, we have enough to get to 35% architectural. That will get us a good solid design. We're actively searching for a theater/sound architect now, to make sure that the 3rd floor will be suitable for a wide variety of performances. We need something appropriate for small theater, dance, chorus and band performances. We need to do the right thing for our children and neighbors who work for hard for weeks, but when performance time comes they don't see the 200 people that came to see them. They see 500 empty seats. KayHi is not appropriate for those shows, and we're losing money and heart there. We need to do the right thing.

We'll be at 35% design by the time 2015 funding comes through. It will only take $150 thousand more to get us to 65% design where we can start doing actual work on the building. $600 thousand would also get some important structural work done and the full $1.25 Million that we requested would get us to the mechanical stage, which is desperately needed, and trigger interest from Rasmuson.

I implored them not let us go into a coma, to give us hope for our prospective donors, to please get us back on the heart transplant list (isn't it illegal to get bumped?;)). If they turned their backs on us, we would surely lose some of our support. They were deciding our fate, live or die. We have well over 300 letters of support, over 300 followers on Facebook, over 60 people of all walks of life directly involved in the project over the last 5 years, a project they praised last year.

So, I simply asked, "Please don't kill it!"

And they complied.

Thank you so much Ketchikan Borough Assembly, and thank you Agnes Moran, Todd Phillips & Alan Bailey for your memorable comments. They are recommending that KPAC be placed on the list as #9.

Thursday night the City, backed up the Borough's resolution to add KPAC to the priority list. I spoke briefly on how important it was for our survival to be on the list, and everyone was very positive, realizing our project needed to stay on the radar. 

Thanks!

Lallette Kistler
Chair, Performing Arts Center Committee
Ketchikan, Alaska

About: http://www.facebook.com/KetchikanPAC

Representations of fact and opinions in letters are solely those of the author.
The opinions of the author do not represent the opinions of Sitnews.