Promising Reviews Are Expected for Probst Center : Thousand Oaks: The exact financial status of the $64-million performing arts facility will not be known until July, but city officials are optimistic that it is making money.

Some of the most powerful people in Thousand Oaks can’t wait to get their hands on the financial report Bob Biery is working on.

The city’s finance director is busily crunching numbers, and when he finishes he will be able to answer one of the most often asked questions in the Conejo Valley.

Is that fancy, new $64-million building by the side of the freeway making any money?

Biery will not be done calculating the exact financial status of the Charles E. Probst Performing Arts Center until July, but he and others are optimistic that the center is making money.

“I think there is a good chance that revenues will exceed expenditures for the first year,” Biery said.

At a time when similar performing arts centers around Southern California are losing money--the city of Cerritos has resigned itself to losing $3 million a year to sustain its performing arts center--the Probst Center appears to be on solid financial footing.

More than a quarter of a million people have traipsed through its violet-hued halls since its opening in October. Also, promoters who book stars at the center are gleefully counting profits and gearing up for a second season, and the city is cautiously proceeding with plans to get more involved with booking acts.

Artists and performers from Bernadette Peters, who belted out show tunes to open the season, to magician David Copperfield proclaimed the acoustics solid and praised the theater’s intimate size. Singer Anne Murray and comedian Howie Mandell said they want to come back and play again. Ray Charles and Tony Bennett crooned to sold-out audiences. What some thought could be a disaster is shaping up to be a success.

“There is a very warm, fuzzy feeling about how the center is doing,” City Manager Grant Brimhall said. “I’m sleeping peacefully at night.”

There have been a few kinks in the Probst Center’s first official season, which ended a few weeks ago. The tiny, full-time staff of five professionals is overworked--while Brimhall sleeps peacefully, exhausted theater director Tom Mitze barely has time to sleep. The building is already showing signs of wear and tear from its many visitors.

And if Biery’s bookkeeping does reveal a profit, it will be a small one. The city has risked little in the Probst Center, following a voter mandate not to use taxpayer dollars on the venture; consequently, it may never make much money.

The city’s careful approach is winning praise from professionals in the arts and entertainment industry, including some who have been less fortunate in their own first seasons.

“I think they are very smart,” said promoter Nick Masters of Avalon Attractions, which books the main headliners at the Probst Center. “Because the city is not risking the city’s money.”

“Everybody wins when we win,” Masters added, referring to his company. “The thing is, when we lose, they still win. I don’t know of another performing arts center that operates on that level.”

The California Center for the Arts in Escondido opened in November, a few weeks after the Probst Center. With a 1,524-seat concert hall and a 408-seat theater, the Escondido center is a little smaller, but quite similar to the Probst Center.

The Escondido complex, however, has been beset with criticism--bad acoustics, too many offbeat productions, complaints about poor sight lines--and is finishing up its first season with a deficit.

Robert Freedman, vice president of the Escondido center, said the facility is still short of its $1.5-million annual fund-raising goal and has had to hold back on expenditures, despite a $500,000 subsidy from the city. Although he said he has no regrets over the way his theater has been handled, Freedman sees wisdom in the way Thousand Oaks does business.

“I think that probably is an extremely sensible strategy,” Freedman said. “And if I’d been there, I think I would have wanted to do it that way too.”

The Probst Center is set up with an endowment, the Alliance for the Arts, which now has more than $10 million in pledges and contributions. Every year, the Alliance doles out $250,000 toward the expense of operating the 1,800-seat concert hall and 400-seat theater.

For its first year, Biery budgeted $1.3 million in operating costs, including salaries--$975,000 for full- and part-time staff members--and $315,000 for utilities and maintenance.

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The true cost of utilities has not been determined yet, mostly because Biery has to determine which charges were for the City Hall side of the building and which were for the performing arts center. But janitorial costs are running slightly higher than expected--spilled sodas, dirty carpets and heavily used restrooms have kept the staff members busy.

“Popularity has been a mixed blessing,” theater director Mitze said. “Over 300,000 people came through here. There has been more wear and tear on the staff and the building than we thought. That was a surprise. We’ve needed everything from more toilet paper to more soap.”

Offsetting those costs are a number of small revenue sources. By farming out booking arrangements to promoters such as Avalon Attractions, Theatre League, Mike Pettite Presentations and several local groups, the city has cut itself out of the chance to make big money from ticket sales.

That strategy has saved the city considerable risk.

“We could have said we can make a lot of money here if we do our own booking,” said Larry Janss, with just a tinge of regret over the lost opportunity. Janss is a member of the Board of Governors that oversees the business dealings of the Probst Center. “But if we had muffed it, wouldn’t we look like idiots?”

Whether shows are successful or not, the performing arts center still collects roughly the same amount for every performance.

Daily rental rates are $1,800 for the larger theater and $400 for the Forum Theatre. The city also collects on labor costs, charging off salaries of its technical workers and box office staff. For a two- or three-night run, those charges can be as high as $10,000.

Thousand Oaks gets a small, nightly box office service fee of $300 to $400. Marriott operates the concession stand, but the city gets about 10% of the take from soda, beer and wine sales. For each performance, the city charges a $200 cleaning fee, though Mitze said that will probably be raised to $250 soon because of the building’s heavy use.

Some additional income also comes from the parking garage, which charges $4 per car during performances. Biery said it is rarely filled to its 700-car capacity, but that on average 500 cars are parked there up to two or three nights a week. But the city then has to pay the concessionaire who runs the garage and the valet parking service.

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The city has co-presented several productions this year with Pettite. The profits from those productions--the theater gets one-third--have gone into a separate account, the Civic Arts Plaza Foundation.

That account, which now totals more than $100,000, can be used in the future to pay for other productions or to bring in schoolchildren to see shows. Next season, the city has committed to co-presenting eight or nine productions, slowly easing into a more active role in programming, but choosing only very popular, safe acts.

“Ninety-five percent of the shows we’ve had this year have been on someone else’s nickel,” Mitze said.

For Pettite, that has been good news; he’s only lost money on one act he brought to the Probst Center. He said agents are happy when they can take home 15% of the total gross, and he has been able to do that.

“Oh yes, the city is making money, we’re making money,” Pettite said. “You’re talking to a greedy promoter--I’m very pleased with the results we’re getting.”

Masters would not say definitely whether Avalon is making money.

“So far so good,” Masters said. “We’re pleased with the way the first year went. Listen, this is not an easy business, but I’m very optimistic about the building. I expect we’ll have a good sophomore year.”

Masters said Avalon has sold out between 60% and 70% of their shows at the Probst Center so far, with about 80% of the seats filled on average.

Next season is already booked solid. The various promoters vying for dates, particularly plum weekend slots, had to fight it out at scheduling meetings. Everybody wanted a piece of the season, from Avalon to the Cabrillo Music Theater, a local group--headed coincidentally by Janss of the Board of Governors--that aspires to become the Probst Center’s resident high-quality musical producer.

“There is some jockeying,” Masters said. “But it’s never gotten out of hand and we’ve never gotten angry. [Working out schedules] is a little frustrating, but it’s not undoable.”

Promoters claim to hear nothing but positive reactions from the artists who have played the Probst Center. Masters boasts of signing folk stars Peter, Paul and Mary for a return visit halfway through this year’s performance. Pettite said Mikhail Barishnikov told him the Probst Center was one of the best he had danced in all year.

“Tony Bennett was so impressed with the acoustics he had them turn off the microphone and he sang a few songs,” Mitze said. “That was a high compliment.”

In keeping with the city’s low-risk financial policy toward the Probst Center, the first season was artistically cautious as well.

“We haven’t taken any real artistic risks,” Mitze said. “Our programming has been very popular and market-oriented. We’re not doing avant-garde works. We should, but we’re not.

“These are very popular shows,” Mitze added. “They are not about death and disease. People come out with a smile on their face.”

Not so in Escondido, where first-season programming was diverse and more avant-garde, featuring lots of modern dance, ballet, Latin music and non-traditional jazz.

“We really took a position that we are an arts center,” Freedman said. “Some things worked and some things didn’t work.”

Faced with less than positive response and ticket sales, Freedman said his theater will do more mainstream programming in its second year.

Mitze said some productions, such as operas, ballets and modern dance, can’t really happen without city subsidies until a theater is well-established. He estimates it will be five years before the Probst Center is ready.

“We will grow into that, mature into that,” Mitze said. “It’s a natural evolution. We won’t do these risky things right away. The reason that we’re making our way financially, and we are, is because of that.”

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In its third year, the Cerritos Center in southeastern Los Angeles County is just starting to develop more diverse programming, General Manager Victor Gotesman said.

“You can’t shove things down people’s throats,” Gotesman said. “It’s our obligation to enlighten the marketplace and to educate them and to bring them along. It has to be done carefully and in small doses.”

Beyond a smattering of ticket sales to Barry Manilow fans in Riverside or Bakersfield, promoters say the Probst Center audience is still mostly local. They hope eventually to draw crowds from the east San Fernando Valley and Los Angeles.

Relying on Thousand Oaks residents to faithfully fill the seats next season would not be prudent, promoters say. The first nine months of operation was a honeymoon period. But next year the marriage starts in earnest.

“We’re getting a local group now,” Pettite said. “But expanding that is always advisable. You can burn out a market if you always have the same group of people. They use up their expendable income. This year we were the new kid on the block, but next year it is going to be virtual reality on your TV set.”

Members of the Board of Governors are well aware of that challenge.

“Year two is always a settle-down year,” board member Bill Bang said. “Audiences begin to change. The euphoria is certainly gone.”

Bang and others, including Larry Janss, do have concerns for the bare-bones staff. If maintaining audience euphoria is a concern, sustaining the energy of staff members is a full-fledged fear.

The Cerritos center has 20 full-time employees; Escondido, which includes an art gallery and convention center, has 50. Thousand Oaks has only five full-time members, including Mitze, technical production manager Gary Mintz and a box office manager.

“I’m amazed that they are able to run the place with that few people,” Escondido’s Freedman said. “I hope they aren’t killing those people.”

Pettite has noticed the strain as well.

“You talk to Tom [Mitze] on a Saturday afternoon, on Thursday night, on Wednesday morning,” Pettite said. “It seems that the man should have had sleeping bags put into the back room.”

Mitze doesn’t complain, but he does concede that he is tired.

“We’re looking forward to July when things die down,” he said. “It’s not a 40-hour workweek. It’s six days and three or four nights. It’s not a job, it’s a calling.”

If he had a little more money in his budget, Mitze said he would hire a full-time marketing/public relations director for the Probst Center. Technical director Mintz would like to hire a full-time stage manager.

But both wishes are not likely to be filled, unless Janss has his way. He does not want to use the word subsidy, but he does think the city should reconsider its decision not to put any money into the operating budget for the performing arts center.

“I refuse to use the s-word ,” Janss said. “But the city should commit to providing sufficient funding to staff the place appropriately so that we don’t suffer burnout. These people are doing extreme yeoman’s work.”

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He also worries that the building will become run-down if the maintenance budget is not increased.

Janss believes the performing arts center is bringing in a number of intangible rewards to the city--from happy schoolchildren getting to see live theater to happy merchants, who feed theater patrons dinner and coffee, dress them to the nines and then pocket the proceeds.

With an eye toward increasing funding for the building, Janss recently proposed that the Board of Governors hire a consultant to study some of those financial benefits, putting them into more tangible terms. The board approved the study, and it is expected to begin in a few months.

While he believes the Probst Center has had a positive financial impact on the city, Janss and others also see it as a cultural jewel.

“I propose that wealth is measured in different ways,” Janss said. “Look what has happened to our lives, the cornucopia of experiences that have been offered up to us.”

Bottom-line-oriented Biery is a little less effusive as he number-crunches.

“We’ve been as successful as we could have hoped for,” Biery said. “But we feel that until we have at least three years under our belt, we really won’t get a good feel as to what to expect for the center.”