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The Artful Manager

Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture

Escaping Atlanta

July 17, 2006 by Andrew Taylor

A featured link in ArtsJournal describes the exodus of the Atlanta Opera from its performance home downtown to a new facility in the suburbs next year. Says the article:


The move is historic: It marks the first time a major-city opera company will leave its established location within a city and move all its performances to a suburb…. And though metro Atlanta’s reputation may be that of one large, sprawling landmass, for the opera, being in Cobb County could present an uncertain bundle of financial, sociological and political ramifications.

The exodus underscores a particularly vexing tension for many metropolitan “SOBs” (symphonies, operas, ballets). As major institutions, they are often expected to play a role in sustaining and revitalizing urban downtowns (and often, they claim that role for themselves in fundraising pitches). At the same time, for many, the bulk of their patrons are not downtown. If they were to really respond to the needs and interests of their primary supporters, they would make their home away from the city, and beyond the beltline, as Atlanta Opera has decided to do.

The opera’s research suggested that 52 percent of its ticket prospects (current and lapsed subscribers, and all single-ticket buyers from the past two years) live closer to the new location than to downtown. And 68 percent of larger donors (gifts over $1000) live closer, as well. Of course, the difference between actual distance and conceptual distance to the new location has yet to be discovered.

As you might expect, there are many additional variables leading to the historic move — lack of an appropriate or responsive venue downtown, among them. But Atlanta likely has a few major peer institutions now more seriously looking around the edges of their current downtown homes.

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Comments

  1. Joan Sutherland says

    July 21, 2006 at 8:19 am

    In the Greater Toronto Region in Ontario, there is a new “densification” of the suburbs taking place. In an effort to solve traffic congestion problems and to save important habitats and farm lands, some suburbs are now beginning to build true downtowns with markets, city halls, performance centres, and parks, out of their often paltry strip mall areas which pass for “places” to shop, and to increase population density by zoning mixed housing, residential and commercial, in the neighbourhoods that are there. Perhaps Atlanta’s Opera is part of a similar, though presently not articulated, necessity? It will be interesting to see what happens in the wake of their move. Will more business and other arts organizations and artists follow? Maybe Florida’s thesis about creative cities will come into play. Atlanta might discover that actual living “downtowns” even in the suburbs are created by cultural workers, not just made attractive by them.

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