ARTS TIX CLICKS FOR SAN DIEGANS

The Arts Tix ticket center, where San Diegans can buy tickets at a discount for theater, opera, dance and symphony performances, last week celebrated a successful first year of operation.

Sponsored by the San Diego Theatre League and located temporarily in the lobby of the Spreckels Theatre, Arts Tix returned $200,000 from ticket sales to the 60 non-profit performing arts groups that use its service. That’s more than 17,000 tickets sold from the booth in the first year, and that rate is rising almost daily.

“From the end of June to October last year, we had $20,000 in sales,” theater league Executive Director Alan Ziter said. “We did that much in the last two weeks.” He attributed recent sales increases in part to the success of the new Deane Theatre in the Gaslamp Quarter and the summer season at the Old Globe and La Jolla Playhouse, as well as the recent arrival of the touring production of the musical “Cats.”

Local theater business managers are extremely high on the ticket booth, which is similar to booths in about eight other U.S. cities.

“It’s a tremendous asset to the arts community,” said Alan Levey, managing director of the La Jolla Playhouse. “It’s the only place you can get all the information or any ticket for any show going on in the city. I really like the fact that it’s downtown. With us being up in La Jolla, our box office is not accessible to the majority of the community.”

Gaslamp Quarter Theatre business manager James A. Strait said, “We sell tickets to almost every performance” through Arts Tix. “They’ve made us a lot more accessible for people who are afraid of going south of Market to get tickets.”

Old Globe Theatre marketing and operations director Joe Kobryner praised the booth’s performance. “That’s ($200,000) a very impressive total,” Kobryner said. “A year ago that figure was zero.”

The Theatre League is a non-profit trade association of local theaters which promotes theater in San Diego. Its ticket center has a dual purpose: to offer a limited number of half-price tickets for the day of performance only, and full-price, advanced sale tickets.

Ziter, who was lured to San Diego from an arts ticket center in Chicago, is happy with the first year’s response of San Diegans.

He has noted a difference between customers in Chicago and San Diego. “I think we saw a few more white-collar workers (in Chicago), the young urban professionals,” Ziter said. “Here we don’t see as many buying tickets. I wonder, what are they doing when they go home from work?”

Ziter said the San Diego performing arts audience is noticeably older than the audiences in Chicago. “Here it seems to be more retired women,” he said.

The ticket center sells half-price tickets to other performing arts events such as opera, dance and music concerts. It also has a Ticketmaster terminal for sporting and popular music events.

Even though the ticket center earned only $18,000--not enough to pay its way--Ziter is pleased with its first-year performance.

“It’s a three-year process,” Ziter said. Until the total sales are high enough to cover costs, the Theatre League’s foundation is paying for the services through fund raising.

“We’ll double our sales when we’re in our new location,” Ziter said. However, getting into that location is posing a problem.

Although the Hahn Co. has donated a site near the entrance to Horton Plaza adjacent to Robinson’s and Glendale Savings, the Theatre League has failed to pinpoint a donor to fund the construction of the permanent booth.

The cost, including the money to operate it for two years, is $200,000, according to League President William Purves So far there are no takers.

Purves thinks that people don’t really understand what the league and the ticket center do, that is serve the performing arts.

“I was sitting next to one of our donors the other night, a person who has contributed to the league,” Purves said, “and she asked what I did. I explained and she said, ‘I always thought you were a ticket scalper.’ ”