FAYETTEVILLE -- The newly expanded Walton Arts Center puts Northwest Arkansas on the map as a hub for promoting the arts, Gov. Asa Hutchinson and other officials said Saturday.
"As governor, I recognize that this is something that's important to our quality of life. The arts add something every day to a new perspective, to enhancing your creative talent in your community, to expression, to creativity," Hutchinson said. "Without the arts, there is a void in our community life, there is a void in the state."
Expansion top 10 contributors:
City of Fayetteville — $7 million
Walton Family Foundation — $5 million challenge grant
Willard and Pat Walker Charitable Foundation — $2 million
Wal-Mart Foundation — $1.5 million
Kelly and Marti Sudduth — $1 million
Fayetteville Advertising and Promotion Commission — $600,000
J.B. Hunt Transport — $500,000
General Mills — $500,000
Starr Family and Starr Foundation — $500,000
Tyson Foods — $500,000
Source: Walton Arts Center
For a more complete list of contributors, go to:
The center's main building, closed in July, reopened to the public Saturday after a $23 million expansion. The renovated center will anchor a five-venue performing arts "campus" in Fayetteville that Mayor Lioneld Jordan expects to boost the economy for the entire city.
Mohammad Almaskeen walked through the new lobby with his family and friends Saturday after the opening fanfare.
"It looks like what you'd see in New York or Chicago," he said. "That's great for the city of Fayetteville."
Walton Arts Center President and Chief Executive Officer Peter Lane said the renovation will allow the center to serve more patrons with more shows and events. He asked people in the crowd Saturday to raise their hands if they had voted for a 2013 bond issue to expand the center, had ever bought a ticket for an event there, or had ever attended an education program, volunteered, worked at or otherwise helped the center.
Most in the crowd raised a hand.
"For 25 years, the Walton Arts Center has served our community, and today the curtain rises as we celebrate our grand reopening," he said.
The expansion means productions that have become larger and more elaborate will have more room to operate and can better meet the expectations of audiences, Lane said in an earlier interview. Before the expansion, the center was operating at 94 percent capacity, he said, with nearly 300,000 people a year walking through its doors.
The expansion got off to rocky start in 2010 when the Walton Family Foundation said it would support only a larger theater in Bentonville, so the center's board asked for changes to adopt a more regional approach.
The foundation ended up donating $5 million for the center's expansion, the largest private donation for the project.
The expansion shows the effect of a partnership-based government, Jordan told the crowd.
"Today we're very proud to support the arts in Fayetteville and help bring the type of programming here that attracts talent to the area, has such a positive impact on quality of life, and introduces the arts and creativity to support a well-rounded cultural experience," he said.
Eric Kerr; his wife, Adrianne; and their sons, Landen, 9, and Nolan, 7, visited the Arts Center on Saturday from their home in Rogers where they have lived for about a year after moving from Maryland.
Nolan said he's excited to see more Broadway plays like Beauty and the Beast at the center, while Landen likes to get his hands dirty using paints and sculpting, and is looking forward to the center's offering in that area.
"I think that's why we like it, because we like to go not to just movie theaters but plays and concerts," Adrianne Kerr said. "They have so many events here."
Bigger, better
With the expansion, the center grew from 55,000 square feet to its new 64,000 square feet. Construction took 16 months in three phases.
The atrium lobby features a 30-foot ceiling and a chandelier that represents contributors. A wall-sized window with movable panels overlooking downtown can be shuttered or opened. The center also features a new garden room, an extra catering kitchen and power connections up front for outside events on Tyson Plaza at West Avenue and Dickson Street.
The wiring, sound and lighting systems all were upgraded.
The center now can have events simultaneously in the main Baum Walker Hall and in the smaller, black box Starr Theater.
The Starr Theater has transformed, Lane said. It has an automated, retractable seating system for 260 people, which allows for quick changes between events. Also, the theater now has its own dressing and green rooms and a production area, Lane said.
"It won't be a storage closet for the 100 days a year when we have a Broadway or a large dance company or something of that nature," he said. "It gives us tremendous flexibility."
The center is just a block from a new, 50,000-square-foot TheatreSquared building, set to open in 2019, at West Avenue and Spring Street. TheatreSquared is a professional theater company.
Nadine Baum Studios, where TheatreSquared operates, is just across West Avenue. It also houses the Community Creative Center, an educational and arts program for children and adults. Officials haven't made any decisions on future use of the theater space in that building, Walton Arts Center spokesman Erin Rogers said.
Also nearby are the University of Arkansas' Faulkner Performing Arts Center, which opened last year, and the fairly new Fayetteville High School Performing Arts Center, Jordan said.
"We are on the cutting edge of performing arts in this city," he said. "It's going to create an arts campus, if you will, where it's just everybody can go to different things right there in the heart of our city. I think it's going to be a real economic generator for us."
Joseph Steinmetz, who became UA-Fayetteville chancellor in January, said Fayetteville routinely receives recognition as one of the best places to live in the nation, and its commitment to visual and performing arts is a big reason.
"People like to go out and have a nice meal downtown, but they also need to feed their eyes and ears through the arts," he said. "To me, the relative wealth of a community is not solely determined by its tax base but by its commitment to a rich, cultural life. Around here, the Walton Arts Center is indispensable to making that commitment."
Dickson Street's many popular restaurants, bars and other businesses, and the arts center have worked hand in hand in fostering economic growth downtown, Jordan said. The center's expansion will add another stage of vibrancy to downtown, he said.
Cory Tran, owner of Kraken Killer Seafood on Dickson Street, which opened in February, and Kream ice cream shop on West Avenue, which opened in September, said he hopes the center's reopening will keep business flowing after the typically busy football season.
Tran imagines people going to his restaurant before a show and getting some ice cream at his shop afterward.
"That's the whole point," he said.
Where it started
The Walton Arts Center opened in 1992 as a joint effort between the university and the city. The city took its first step in 1977 when voters approved a hotel, motel and restaurant tax to pay for UA's Center for Continuing Education. Leftover revenue went toward construction of the arts center, according to Arkansas Democrat-Gazette archives.
Officials added a portion of the 1 percent sales tax in 1981, and, that same year, Sam and Helen Walton donated $5 million to the university to build an arts center.
The city and university pegged Dickson Street as the most suitable location.
Billie Jo Starr, whose family and foundation donated $500,000 to the expansion, served as executive director of the North Arkansas Symphony in the early 1980s. For decades the symphony played in an old gym, and bounced around churches and other venues to practice.
The arts center marked a cornerstone for what soon became a thriving entertainment district, she said.
"It was the best we could do at the time," Starr said. "There were some very loyal people on the board of the symphony. It was a culmination of a lot of people sticking to their guns saying, 'Let's find a place.'"
The city has come a long way from having a makeshift stage at a gym double as its performing arts venue, she said.
The arts center's expansion became possible through a combination of private and public donations and a $7 million contribution from the city.
Fayetteville voters in 2013 approved issuing $1.5 million in bonds to pay off the remaining Town Center debt, $3.5 million to put toward Kessler Mountain Regional Park and $7 million toward the Walton Arts Center expansion.
The $23.8 million that the center has raised to date is made up of 211 donations, according to its numbers. The Luminary Society, consisting of contributors who gave at least $200,000, has 21 members. More than 50 major donors contributed $10,000 to $199,000. The rest came from smaller donations or people who contributed enough to get their names on chairs and bricks at the center.
The center fundraises about 30 percent of its budget and the other 70 percent is earned, compared with about a 50-50 split in 2009, Lane said. Its operating budget rose from $8 million in 2009 to $21 million this year.
Ticket prices will not rise as a result of the expansion, Rogers said. Market demand and artist fees set the prices.
Bentonville prospects
Even with the Walton Arts Center's expansion, there is still support for building a performing arts venue in Bentonville.
"We do believe, as far as Bentonville, that there is a need," Lane said. "All of our studies absolutely lead to the fact that we believe a 2,000-seat theater and another education center, at some point in the future, is in the cards. But it's not in the short term."
The Walton Family Foundation in 2010 sent a letter to the arts center stating its desire to see a center in Bentonville.
"We do not foresee being the lead donor for a new performing arts facility in a location other than Bentonville," then-Executive Director Buddy Philpot said at the time.
The center's governance structure officially changed in 2014 when the City Council approved changes to the Walton Arts Center Council that mean the 20-member governing body is no longer considered an "agent" of the city.
The city and UA each retained five representatives on the nonprofit's council, with the rest appointed by the Walton Family Foundation.
That change signified the nonprofit's original intent to be a regional entity, Lane said. The council also controls the Arkansas Music Pavilion, which moved from Fayetteville to Rogers in 2014.
More recently, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville announced in March plans for a mixed-use contemporary visual and performing arts space at the old Kraft plant in downtown Bentonville. Steuart and Tom Walton, grandsons of Sam Walton, have spearheaded the project.
Plans for the venue are in development, Crystal Bridges spokesman Beth Bobbitt said. The space likely will feature a mix of visual arts, performances and culinary events, she said.
Crystal Bridges will work with partners such as the Walton Arts Center to have smaller events at the new space that will complement what's happening in the Northwest Arkansas art scene, Bobbitt said.
"We don't see it being the same kind of performances or the same-sized venue, for that matter," she said.
Bentonville also has a 15,761-square-foot movie theater in development for its downtown. The Northwest Arkansas Downtown Revitalization Fund, financed by members of the Walton family, is building the theater. It's expected to open in the spring.
No official plans have been released yet for a possible upscale performing arts center in Bentonville.
"I don't know when Bentonville is going to build a performing arts center, but right now I know this much: I've got one right down here," Jordan said of Fayetteville. "And it's going to be a good one."
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