The City of Tulsa may hand over the reigns of the Performing Arts Center after more than 40 years.
Officials are in talks to turn over operations and management of the PAC to the 16-member Performing Arts Center Trust.
"The situation here is a little bit unique in that we have the advantage of working with a partner that’s been around for 45 years and that the city is directly a beneficiary of a public trust," said Mayor's Chief of Staff Jack Blair. "It’s a known quantity, so I think that helps quite a bit in making this kind of transition."
PAC Director Mark Frie has seen such an arrangement work before.
"I think it makes a lot of sense to look at this model. It’s a model that I helped create in Broken Arrow before I came over, and it definitely gives a performing arts center, from a day-to-day operational standpoint, greater flexibility to take advantage of opportunities that, right now, we miss," said PAC Director Mark Frie.
The Tulsa Zoo and Gilcrease Museum are also operated by nonprofit trusts, giving them greater leeway in raising private funds. Letting the PAC Trust operate the PAC could help when it comes to fundraising, especially for renovations that haven’t made it into recent funding packages.
"Anything that we dream to build to enhance the PAC is going to have to be a public-private venture, and this would set us up better to be able to fundraise on the other end of it," Frie said.
The city has owned and operated the PAC since it opened in March 1977.
