Lincoln Theater to Reopen

Mark MacNamara on November 26, 2012

The Lincoln Theater, former home of the Napa Valley Symphony, is reopening on Dec. 3, 2012 under a new name, The Napa Valley Performing Arts Center. Lights will dim and the curtain will rise for the first official event in March, 2013. A full program of performances is expected to begin next fall.

The Lincoln Theater’s fate had been uncertain following its closure last January, which coincided with the demise of the Napa Valley Symphony. The 1,214-seat theater was built in 1957 as part of the Veterans Home of Yountville, the largest veterans home in the United States. The theater was closed for renovation in 2000 and then, five years and $22 million later, reopened as a state-of-the-art venue for the Napa Valley Symphony, among other arts organizations.

The state-owned theater’s collapse began when its long-time benefactor, Donald Carr, died in an auto accident in August 2011. He had paid half of the $22 million cost of restoration, and was also the chief benefactor of the Napa Valley Symphony.

The theater was managed by Friends of the Lincoln Theater, which filed for dissolution in December 2011. The theater went dark in January and reopened briefly in June for the Del Sole Festival, thanks in part to local arts philanthropists, as well as intervention from California Governor Jerry Brown.

Michael Madden, the managing director of the old theater has been named interim executive director of the new theater, as well as chief executive of the new Lincoln Theater Foundation.

Partnership With IMG Artists

The theater’s revival is in large measure due to a pledge of financial and management resources from IMG Artists, a performing arts management company that holds contracts with such clients as Itzhak Perlman, Hilary Hahn, Joshua Bell, Julia Fischer, Julian Lloyd Webber, Renée Fleming, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic’s Yuri Temirkanov, and Andre Previn.

The role that IMG might play in the new venture is not entirely clear and nothing has been formally agreed to. Barbara Brogliatti, president of the foundation board, will only say that discussions are continuing about an “ongoing collaboration.” An announcement may come in mid-December.

“Our focus,” says Brogliatti, “is on this community. We’ve adopted a new attitude and a new commitment to creating a true arts center, where community and education are as important as entertainment. You could say that our approach is to under-promise and over-perform.”

But will this venture succeed when the last foundered, and some might add, predictably foundered? The answer is a measure of new managers and partners, but also of the Napa Valley community itself, which has a long record of commitment to the arts but in recent years has seemed strangely ambivalent.

The problem is not only an aging audience, the continuing effects of the Great Recession of 2008, a new theater just over the hills in Santa Rosa, not to mention the lure of Davies Hall in San Francisco, but also perhaps a doubt among big donors that enough local board members can be found — not only at the new theater but in a new symphony, if there is one — who might be willing to give their own money and then do the dirty, tiring work of raising more.

Napa Valley Symphony Negotiating Bankruptcy

If a local orchestra is to be part of the theater’s fall 2013 performance schedule, a lot of work remains to be done.

The Napa Valley Symphony Association filed Chapter 7 last winter and is now in the hands of a bankruptcy trustee who is going after the symphony’s endowment fund to pay off creditors, including the musician’s union, which claims money to cover pension obligations, unpaid salaries, and contributions to unemployment insurance. The fund’s total assets came to about $1.245 million in 2011.

“We have to submit our reply to the bankruptcy attorney by the end of November (2012),” says Susan Hafleigh, who heads the NVS endowment fund board. She expects a settlement will be a matter of months. As for the chances of winning, Hafleigh says attorneys have told her that this is by no means a “slam-dunk:” “I don’t know what the odds are. Maybe 50/50.”

Beyond the value of the fund as a foundation for a new symphony, Hafleigh believes if the lawsuit is lost it would serve as a warning to donors about committing to any arts endowment in Napa, but particularly the symphony: “If this fails, some may feel, why would I want to leave something to organizations with such an uncertain future?

And, one might add, such a murky past.

Part of the problem that led to the symphony’s demise was poor relations between the symphony and its endowment fund. In 2005, symphony executives used the endowment — before it became a corporation — as collateral to draw down $300,000 out of what was then a $450,000 endowment. The mistrust that grew out of that decision was never undone, and so a year ago when the symphony wanted money to cover operating expenses, the endowment fund balked.

“When they came to us we paid the critical payables,” says Hafleigh. “But when they asked for another $300,000 we said no. It just didn’t seem like they had a viable plan. They’d lost both their principal funder, Don Carr, and also funding from the Napa Valley Symphony League. And we couldn’t see their financials.”

Mike Enfield, head of the Napa Valley Symphony’s board of directors, remains convinced that had the Napa Valley Symphony endowment fund been willing to provide bridge funding to support the Mozart festival he had once envisioned for the spring of 2012, “the association would still be around and the opening of the theater would be that much more promising …”

And so the question remains: Will the Napa Valley Performing Arts Center have a resident orchestra?

Symphonic Resuscitation?

There is a plan to revive the Napa Valley Symphony Association, which hinges on an agreement with the musician’s union to withdraw their petition to the bankruptcy court for $600,000 to cover musician’s pensions and other obligations. If the deal goes through, the association, which has not been dissolved, would retain intangible assets including the name of the organization. That would allow backers to apply for the creation of a successor organization.

Eldon Sellers, a former member of the Symphony board of directors, and one who has played an intermediary between the symphony and the union in the past, says there have been ongoing talks with all the interested parties: “All I can say is that we don’t know what the outcome will be. Ask again in a couple of weeks.”

In September, the Symphony held a well-attended concert in downtown Napa. The musicians were not paid, which is one measure of their desire to keep the orchestra playing.