Editorial: Troubling signs in theatre restoration

OPINION: The restoration of Nelson's historic Theatre Royal is an ambitious project and, as news this week reinforces, an increasingly costly one.

It is also necessary and the energy being put into it by a community-based trust is admirable. Judging from the reaction at open days, it will be a hit with the public.

When it is finally re-opened, expected to be in June, it will be the return of a sorely-missed performance venue and should set up the 132-year-old building for many more decades of service to the city.

But for all the project's merits, the merry-go-round that has come to characterise its funding is troubling.

The restoration has been the target of sniping by various self-appointed watchdogs of the public purse, although that criticism has mostly been dismissed as mean-spirited and ill-informed.

Yet the sense has increasingly been that the reach of the trust's vision for the theatre has not been matched by its ability to tap into a wide enough pool of fundraising sources.

This week, it has emerged that it has been lobbying the Nelson City Council for another loan to help get the project completed by the June deadline. Further, the cost is now put at somewhere north of $6 million – compared to past estimates of $4.4m – and there is serious talk of the city council becoming the theatre's new owner.

As it is, the details of the theatre's financing are confusing and it is strange that the trust chairman, Greg Shaw, should be reluctant to say how much it has raised from its fundraising pushes through open days and seat sponsorship.

Obviously, the vast bulk of its income has come from council and government grants and loans.

That is not unprecedented for such projects, but it is unclear whether it has achieved anything like the target typically set by the councils, for the community organisation to meet 20 per cent of the cost from public fundraising.

That it is relying on continuing loan finance, which it apparently hopes to repay through either proceeds from theatre hire or a sale to the city, leads only to the conclusion that it has been unable to turn the apparent public enthusiasm for the project into generous financial support.

Nelson Mayor Kerry Marshall has expressed consternation at organisations which fall short in fundraising targets when their projects are well down the track heading cap-in-hand to Civic House.

He is right to be alarmed. The economic climate demands that the council be cautious and restrained in all its spending.

Even if the impact on rates of a loan to the theatre is minimal, the principle is unhealthy.

As well, the prospect of the council committing yet more money to the theatre and even becoming its owner may prove awkward politically when it has to refocus its energies to winning over an increasingly-sceptical public to a revised performing arts centre proposal.

As far as the theatre trust goes, it deserves continued encouragement as it pushes towards the end of a mammoth project.

But it cannot rely on endless goodwill if it cannot counter the sense that its vision for the building has not been matched by an efficient, focused and committed approach to every possible fundraising source apart from the public purse.

- © Fairfax NZ News