In the post-Jewel era, what is to become of the Colligan Theater?

The last curtain has fallen, the last standing ovation has faded, the last tears have been shed. Jewel Theatre Company’s eight-plus-year tenure at the Colligan Theater is over. Now comes the question on many minds in the performing arts community:

What now for the Colligan?

With Jewel no longer as its main tenant and operator, all possibilities of the Colligan’s future are suddenly on the table, from it emerging as a central hub for a thriving and multifaceted performing arts community to it becoming a rarely used and largely empty facility too expensive to operate. With its many potential challenges, the future of the theater space and maybe even, at least in part, the future of the Tannery Arts Center is reaching a pivotal point. 

The 182-seat theater space on the campus of the Tannery Arts Center in Santa Cruz opened in late 2015, and Jewel has been its primary — often, only — tenant and occupant since its opening. Less than a decade old, the Colligan is cozy, but it ranks perhaps with the Crocker Theater at Cabrillo as one of Santa Cruz County’s most comfortable and up-to-date performance venues, with a roomy house for audiences, fine acoustics and capacious stage, adaptable for a wide variety of performances. 

The building is owned by the City of Santa Cruz, which has known for more than a year now that Jewel would be giving up its residency at the theater in May 2024. Last month, on the very day that Jewel began the three-weekend run of its final production, “Always … Patsy Cline,” the city issued a request for proposals (RFP) to community to attract prospective tenants to the Colligan. The deadline for that RFP passed on June 3. And the city, through its Economic Development and Housing Department, is evaluating the proposals submitted. 

The city also owns the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, which is staffed by city employees. That is not the model that it is seeking for the Colligan. The city wants an independent operator — a nonprofit arts organization or a private for-profit presenter — to run the space as a tenant.

“We’re getting questions,” said the city’s development manager for the project, Kathryn Mintz. “‘In between Jewel’s programming, which has ended, and when a new operator comes in, can the building be used?’ And, we don’t have the staff for that. The city doesn’t operate that space.”

The city, however, would like to have a choice in place to present to the city council in August, and have the new tenant in place by Sept. 1.

The city, said Mintz, opened up the RFP process to all comers, but it has certain objectives in its search for a new operator of the Colligan. What it wants is a new tenant that can:

• offer financial stability in the day-to-day operation of the facility with minimum financial support from the city.
• maintain an open-door policy to any local arts organization that would want to use the space “for the maximum number of events that is feasible.”
• have a promotional presence to attract audiences.
• provide a commitment to keep the theater programmed with frequent events in part to generate potential foot traffic and/or an economic boost to the rest of the Tannery, and to create productive relationships with those who live and/or work there. 

Some in the arts community were critical of Jewel for what they saw as the company’s monopolizing of the Colligan space, and indeed when Jewel wasn’t presenting performances — 72 productions over the course of its almost nine-year run — it was using the space for rehearsals, tech and set design. An Equity theater company with standards of top-flight urban theater didn’t have much room for others to use the space. The city’s objectives for the RFP suggest that it is looking for a more open and diverse schedule of programming than Jewel offered.

“The city has every interest in a lease that makes the operator or manager successful,” said Mintz. “We want [the new tenant] to provide a cultural facility and performing arts venue that’s available to and affordable for use by local community organizations and nonprofits. For the maximum number of events that are feasible.”

The Colligan is not as attractive a landing spot for potential presenters as it might appear, said Jim Brown, executive director of Arts Council Santa Cruz County, who was part of a proposal review panel. 

“There’s some real challenges with the Colligan Theater,” said Brown. “The operating costs are very high and the house is relatively small. So it’s very hard for it [to tend] to pencil out economically without some significant subsidy. And the city’s not able to make a subsidy to support the theater. So the only alternative is really going out and looking for foundations and other philanthropic support.”

According to Jewel’s 2022-23 budget, it paid $2,000 a month to the city for rent. But on top of that were fees for Common Area Maintenance or “CAM costs,” which are maintenance and security costs for the grounds and parking lots adjacent to the building, amounting to the Colligan’s share of costs for the entire Tannery campus (about 13%). Those CAM costs for Jewel in 2022-23 were above $38,000. The city projects that cost for this year to be about $46,000. Those expenses, plus janitorial fees, insurance and utilities, added up to more $130,000 in operating costs for Jewel.

Those potential costs might have scared away a few presenters and/or organizations that otherwise might have been interested in the Colligan. But there are still at least some potential tenants interested in taking over management of the theater. Mintz declined to say exactly how many proposals the city is now evaluating, but a “followers list” on the RFP suggested that the city has only one proposal in hand. 

That one proposal comes from the Santa Cruz-based organization All About Theatre (AAT), run by Lindsey Chester. She and her company have been producing community-theater productions locally for more than 20 years (most recently, a production of “Urinetown” at the London Nelson Center, which opened in April), with classes and workshops for both adults and children interested in theater.

“I think we’re a strong contender,” said Chester, AAT’s artistic director and a veteran stage actor in her own right. Though she would certainly want to use the Colligan for AAT productions, its status as a tuition-based community theater program means that it would be more open to other users than Jewel was. “We’re used to working at venues like the London Nelson, where you move in, you have a week of tech, and then after the last show, you get out of there. It’s fast and furious.”

In fact, Chester’s vision as a potential operator at the Colligan includes an ambitious plan for community outreach, to turn the Colligan into an all-purpose space for a diverse roster of shows and events.

“Our dream is that we would actually go out and actively seek out a lot of other people with a lot of different modalities of the arts,” she said. “It is a beautiful theater. But I don’t think that it just has to be considered a performing arts theater. It has beautiful, high ceilings. You could have TED talks in there, for example. It could have lectures, film screenings — although there’s a limitation I believe on that, so as not to pull from the other venues in town. [A lot of dance companies] could be interested in doing dance performances there. There could be DJs who could come in and utilize the space. And there are a lot of artists right there in the Tannery Lofts. I’d like to find out what their interests are, they’re passions.”

Chester said that she has already heard from various groups and organizations interested in using the Colligan. She even suggested that her theater group could be flexible enough in their programming to accommodate other performance groups. 

Chester said that moving into the Colligan is financially “within our means.” She said that the rent at the Colligan is “nothing when compared with the $5,500 [per month] I pay for our warehouse.” She also said that she and her staff would focus on fundraising through grants and philanthropy, and the programming plan she has in mind will be in tune with what granters are looking for. 

“I’d like to see the Colligan Theater as more of a hub of the arts, with a very deep focus on diversity and inclusion,” Chester said. “That is actually more where the grants over the hill and in Silicon Valley are truly putting their priorities these days.”

There are many challenges to running a theater like the Colligan. The theater has a concession area, which will put a new operator into the food-service business at least to a limited degree. There are ticketing procedures and technologies to manage, and, of course, sophisticated calendar management to fulfill the city’s wishes to have the theater as busy as it can be. 

“This would be a great opportunity for us to have our own home,” said Chester. “But it’s not going to be our own home exclusively, only for All About Theatre. We’re not going to exclude others. We’re a very inclusive community. And I think that that is the resounding kind of message that we want to get out there: If we become the operator, we want to have everybody of all the modalities coming to make that a hub that All About Theatre is a part of, not on top of the food chain.”

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