News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
When Sisters resident Lynn Wolff heard about a proposed Sisters community amphitheater, she was reminded of a similar project in her former home of Sedona, Arizona - a project that a decade ago failed after three years.
She wondered if Sedona's experience might hold some lessons for Sisters.
A nonprofit organization spent years raising funds to develop a 44-acre "cultural park" in Sedona. According to Sedona Mayor Rob Adams, "The grand opening of the Cultural Park was held in May of 2000 and the first concert season began. The park was operated as a nonprofit and managed by the Sedona Cultural Park Board of Directors."
Mayor Adams' recounting of the cultural park's demise may be found at http://sedonaeye.com/eye-on-sedona-cultural-park.
The park was open from 2000 to 2003 when it went into bankruptcy. What happened?
"It's very, very simple," said Patrick Schweiss, executive director of the Sedona International Film Festival. "The main reason it failed was that as soon as they got the thing built they stopped fundraising."
The film festival was a product of the cultural park nonprofit, and it was the only part of the entity to survive, being spun off into its own nonprofit.
Schweiss said the cultural park immediately built up significant overhead.
"They were hiring and hiring staff members and they had no revenue coming in," he said.
The quick demise was unfortunate in Schweiss' view, because during the time it was open the cultural park amphitheater was a very nice venue.
Christopher Graham, managing editor of the Sedona Red Rock News, said that the community had been supportive of the project.
"For the most part they were supportive," he said. "I think they bit off more than they could chew in terms of the size of it."
The concept for how the venue would be booked may also have been flawed. According to Graham, the idea was to use the amphitheater as a draw for tourists from markets two-hours and more away - Prescott, Flagstaff, Phoenix. They weren't seeking to pull from markets equivalent to Bend, Redmond and Prineville.
"They were trying to make it like a vacation destination," Graham said. "Come to see a concert and stay a couple of days."
And yet those booking the arena did not include radius clauses to keep performers from playing a night or two before or after in the same market they were trying to draw from.
Additionally, there was a 35-member board of directors, which made decision-making very difficult.
Mayor Adams' piece also notes that the operating "plan included restrictions on sound, lighting, traffic and the number of events that could be held at the park. The park could only hold a specified number of events per year that had to conclude by 10 in the evening. There were problems with controlling the noise and lighting that musical events produced. Additionally, the parking areas were on a dirt surface and dust control became difficult."
Graham said that, while there were concerns expressed over noise, most of the adjacent homes were timeshares, and the natural features of the amphitheater kept sound from spilling over significantly enough to be a nuisance.
According to Graham, there have been no efforts to reboot the park as a venue. A developer has sought to get the zoning changed on the land, but that has been in limbo for years.
The park remains unused today.
"For the three following years (after the park closed), they used it for high school graduation," Graham noted.
Schweiss believes the amphitheater was not set up to succeed from the beginning.
"In hindsight, it was doomed from the start," he said.
It doesn't have to play out that way.
"If it's run correctly and you continue to fundraise, it can be an awesome place," he said. "It can be a pretty cool thing."
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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