Sunday, Dec. 11, 2005 | 9:22 a.m.
The memory stays with you. The performance. The crowd. The connection to something bigger.
For Myron Martin, it first happened in elementary school when he was on a field trip.
"I remember getting off the school bus in front of Jones Hall in Houston and seeing this incredible building, walking in to the lobby and into the theater, a sea of 2,000 red velvet seats, feeling electricity in the air, seeing lights go down, the curtain going up.
"Everybody was excited."
Pausing, Martin returns to the present, the one where he is talking about his plans for the future downtown performing arts center.
Covering tables in his office are hard-bound, thick glossy books: "Opera Houses of Europe," "Great Opera Houses," "Gran Teatro la Fenice" and "Theatres and Opera Houses: Masterpieces of Architecture."
On his desk is a sketch he made the day before while on a return trip from touring various performing arts centers in other cities with the Las Vegas Performing Arts Foundation.
In January the foundation, of which Martin is executive director, will issue a request for proposals from architects. This will be another step taken by the Las Vegas Performing Arts Center Foundation to move forward its plans for the Smith Center for Performing Arts, a public and private partnership.
The center is named for Fred Smith, chairman of the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation and a longtime Southern Nevada civic leader. The Reynolds Foundation donated $50 million to the center last spring. Of that amount, $5 million is to be used up front for pre-development costs. The other $45 million is to be used exclusively for an endowment.
Once the architect is selected, the group will begin its fundraising campaign and work with the architect on the building's needs.
"Part of the promise to the community is that what we build will be a world-class theater," Martin said. "We expect it to be a most significant piece of architecture."
For a city that implodes its structures within 50 years of their birth, Martin said, "We're looking at a building that will last for 200 years."
The plan is to create a traditional European-style horseshoe-shaped theater. Inspiration has come from the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, in Newark; Bass Hall in Fort Worth, Texas; the Schuster Performing Arts Center in Dayton, Ohio; and the Kravis Center West Palm Beach, Fla., all sites that foundation board members have visited.
Culture clash
Martin says he thinks about the center every day and every night. In some way, he believes that his position as executive director was a fated stop made possible by his 15 years with Baldwin piano company. The Baldwin company led to a position as executive director of the Liberace Foundation and led to director for UNLV's Performing Arts Center, which ended after four years.
But in taking on the head position of a nearly $300 million project, Martin faces the challenge of bringing in funds and staging productions that will keep its doors open while providing a home to such local institutions as the Las Vegas Philharmonic and Nevada Ballet Theatre.
"I'm as fascinated watching it from the outside as I would be if I were involved," said Jeff Koep, dean of UNLV's College of Fine Arts. "Once you open the doors on a center like that, it's an expensive operation to keep running.
"There is a delicate balance of needing Broadway shows to fund it. But too many outside performing groups can cut out local efforts."
Critics wonder if the foundation's plan for bringing Broadway musicals (that would normally pass on Las Vegas and its lack of adequate venues) will hold up against the Strip theaters already home to Broadway productions.
"They're up against a really difficult well-funded machine called the Strip," said William Fox, former director of the Nevada Arts Council and author of "In the Desert of Desire: Las Vegas and the Culture of Spectacle."
"There comes a point within every city's history when people get together and feel they've got to build a PAC, and Las Vegas has come to that. Las Vegas certainly needs a PAC. It's needed one for a long, long time. But if you're trying to grow culture, what kind of anchor are you going to give that society?
"If I had to pick and choose what Las Vegas needs as a major cultural center, head and shoulders more, it would be an art museum," Fox said. "At this point, if you live in Las Vegas, you have access to a wide variety of music, dance and theater. You do not have access to your own visual culture ... It's all in bits and pieces around town with no continuum."
Martin said the Smith Center for Performing Arts is for the community, rather than tourists, that will offer high-art and multicultural performances. Its educational efforts will serve as educational tools for local schoolchildren. He's also brought up the idea of presenting television awards shows at the new center.
Speaking hypothetically, Martin said, "It's conceivable that over a period of a couple of seasons that we could touch every student in the Clark County School District."
"It's important," said Nancy Houssels, a longtime Las Vegas resident who serves on the board of the Nevada Ballet Theatre and of the LVPAC Foundation. "That's your audience of the future, and it can also change lives. I learned this from working with the ballet.
"We'll expand the program to one that's beyond just coming to a performance. We'll take it into the classroom, have visits to theater, have students learn show technology, meet the artist and have pre-production lectures in their classrooms."
Additionally, Houssels said, "We've been stumbling along the best we could. It's going to add a whole new image, a whole new community gathering place. It will fill the cultural gap that we have or are perceived to have. Having a beautiful theater to perform in, it's going to uplift our community a great deal."
"We're ready as a town to see something in the right environment. The Three Tenors at the Thomas & Mack Center, accoustically, that can't be good."
Then and now
Official dialogue on a performing arts center began in the mid-1990s, when local executives and arts supporters met to talk. Among them were Houssels, Steve and Elaine Wynn and Don Snyder, who was still in the banking business.
Hal Weller was still serving as artistic director and general manager of the Flagstaff (Ariz.) Symphony, and the Las Vegas Philharmonic didn't, in name, exist.
The Nevada Ballet Theatre was still the Nevada Dance Theatre and had not moved into its new home on Inner Circle Drive in Summerlin. Las Vegas Art Museum was about to be evicted from its location in Lorenzi Park. The city didn't have possession of the 61 acres of downtown land that was the Union Pacific Railroad yard.
There was no Furniture Mart. The Arts District had yet to develop. Steve Wynn had not brought fine art to the Strip and Oscar Goodman was not yet mayor.
A few years later Mirage Resorts commissioned Luntz Research Companies in Virginia to gauge public interest in a professional sports arena and also a performing arts center. The results were that 87 percent were in favor of building a performing arts center if it didn't require tax dollars. With tax dollars, 61 percent were in favor.
"We all recognized it was pretty early in life cycle of Las Vegas in regard to the size of the community," said Snyder, former president of Boyd Gaming and chairman of the Las Vegas Performing Arts Center Foundation.
In a 2003 survey geared solely to a performing arts center, results were promising: 71 percent were in favor of a center even with the introduction of the car rental tax.
Snyder said that the survey, the money from the Reynolds Foundation and a handful of unsolicited million-dollar donations is a clear sign that the community wants a performing arts center.
When Snyder looks at the performing arts center, he sees economic development and diversification, an entity that will help attract companies and workers to Southern Nevada.
Snyder, who was a banker for 22 years, said it was difficult to recruit bankers to Las Vegas. He cites a 2003 report by the National Governors Association on state investments in culture spurring economic development.
While chairman of the Nevada Development Authority, Snyder said the performing arts center was part of NDA's dialogue.
"It's an important part of us building our economy more broadly than it is," Snyder said.
Cost of culture
Recent estimates put the cost of the center, opening with a healthy operating endowment, at $300 million
"It's probably more these days," said Snyder, explaining that construction costs -- a result of Katrina and other disasters -- are out of control.
"We probably, in a practical sense, need to build in phases," Snyder said. "Start with the large theater, then build an 800-seat theater. We hoped not to do that, but we need to have a little flexibility."
Though Weller believes the performing arts center will provide a great opportunity for the Las Vegas Philharmonic, he's reluctant to celebrate this early in the project.
"Most communities that spend $300 million on a PAC have a developed cultural infrastructure to put in it," Weller said. "We do not. We have the Philharmonic. We have the ballet. So I do have reservations about what else is going to pay the bill.
"If it's Broadway productions, I do have reservations about bringing Broadway when the Strip has them."
Weller would rather see that kind of money spent on Southern Nevada's cultural infrastructure, rather than on a hall.
"We need a real viable professional theater company. We have no chamber orchestra, we don't have a professional chorus. We don't have a lot of things. This is the first community building a facility to support two hometown organizations when they're relatively modest organizations."
Most of the centers that foundation members have visited have professional opera and theater companies involved.
But the chicken-or-the-egg-thing, as local arts representatives have referred to the center and local culture, still has a while to be debated since the center's first show isn't likely to happen until 2009.
Weller says that he believes Martin is a competent theater director. He sees Martin's bringing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to Las Vegas last year a major accomplishment, one that "takes an act of God."
Weller said he feels the Philharmonic is being left out of the early planning stages. But Martin says the foundation has and will continue to seek feedback from local groups.
There has been concern that local professional groups could be left out. Snyder said there is "zero chance" that local institutions would be outpriced or ignored.
"They had that concern," he said. "But having an operational endowment will help ensure that this will be a center they can be at and perform at."
Come together
Harris Ferris, executive director of Nevada Ballet Theatre, says the PAC will help Southern Nevada become a well-rounded community and take its arts from the regional level to a world-class level.
NBT is already planning for the change. Bruce Steivel is looking into whether the ballet could sustain a professional orchestra with performances at the new center. He's also looking into the acquisition of major works.
"These are capital investments," Ferris said. "We try to do full-length ballets at Judy Bayley. But the ballet is in some way going to be compromised."
Weller says the Philharmonic faces similar problems.
"We cover a lot of ground from classics to premiere compositions," Weller said. "What I'm looking for is a hall to accommodate major operatic productions with an orchestra. We're not able to do huge things."
Martin says the center will act as a catalyst for growth for both companies.
"My dream is that we will find a way to provide offices for our local residences," Martin said. "Las Vegas Philharmonic, a theatre company, an opera company. They'll meet at the water cooler, come up with new ideas."
Martin even wants to try to involve groups like Cirque du Soleil, saying, "In my perfect world they would be part of that office building."
In response to criticism over a downtown performing arts center presenting Broadway productions, he simply says, "I'm not going to do those five shows."
The shows to which Martin is referring are "Mamma Mia!" "Avenue Q" and the arrival of "Spamelot," "Phantom of the Opera" and Martin's own "Hairspray!" opening February at the Luxor.
"Lion King" and "Wicked" are the two Broadway productions Martin has his eye on. He argues that the critical mass of shows on the Strip will help sell tickets for Broadway shows at the new performing arts center.
Besides, he said, "This is much more than another theater, another venue. This is something we don't have at all in our community."
Kristen Peterson can be reached at 259-2317 or at [email protected].
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