Just days before Centerstage Theatre produced its final showing of its newly acclaimed World War I musical on Sunday, the longtime theatre became embroiled in a battle of its own with the city of Federal Way.

Mayor Jim Ferrell and city staff notified Centerstage on May 20 that the city decided to allow the contract to expire with the theatre, which has operated the city-owned Knutzen Family Theatre at the Dumas Bay Centre since 2009. Instead, the city will manage and operate the Knutzen Family Theatre in-house.

City officials requested that Centerstage vacate the theatre when the contract expires on June 30.

“This is the death of Centerstage,” said the theatre’s board of directors president Bob Dockstader, who said the city “abruptly and precipitously” ceased negotiations with Centerstage last week.

Following the city’s announcement, Centerstage artistic director Alan Bryce launched an aggressive email campaign that has already generated over 500 emails from theatre supporters to the city. The massive emails and a letter from the board to the city on Friday prompted city officials to schedule another negotiation meeting with Centerstage on Wednesday morning.

The board asked the city to temporarily extend the date of the current contract to provide the board the necessary time to discuss options for both Centerstage and the city to mutually achieve their goals. The board said they would like to make some arrangement with the city by this Friday. After that point, they wrote, “the cancelation of commitments for future productions and summer programs, plus the liquidating of assets to meet our remaining financial responsibilities must begin.”

Ferrell said emails flooded the council’s inbox over the weekend.

“Centerstage is putting this into the context of, if they don’t get this contract with the city, [the recent musical] could be their last show in Federal Way,” he said. “But after six years of receiving over a half million dollars of the city’s money, I am concerned about the financial health of Centerstage and its management. I’m very concerned how their entire viability rests on this management concept.”

The mayor said the money the city pays Centerstage to manage the facility — $76,500 per year — is supposed to be spent managing the facility, “not to prop up Centerstage. That’s a deeper story and, frankly, I’m not sure if taxpayers of Federal Way should be solely responsible for Centerstage’s survival.”

Nevertheless, Ferrell said the city has a longstanding history of supporting the arts and they are going to “work really hard to make sure the needs of both parties are met.”

City contracts with Centerstage

Bryce said managing a theater and trying to stay afloat is “a constant battle that you just have to fight to move forward.”

Nine years ago, Centerstage struggled with its rent payments to the city, which then operated the Knutzen Family Theatre. Bryce began lobbying the city to see if Centerstage could manage the facility because he feared the theatre would go out of business. After several delays, he said the recession hit in 2008 and the city finally put out a request for proposals, seeking for someone to manage the facility. Centerstage and the Tacoma Musical Playhouse both bid for the contract.

“I remember when I first ran for mayor, I actually had in my [campaign] brochure that I stood up for Centerstage and wanted to make sure that we have Centerstage in this facility because the Tacoma Musical Playhouse was one of the bidders and I felt passionately that I wanted local theater [here,]” Ferrell recalled.

He “linked up arms” with Deputy Mayor Jeanne Burbidge and he recalls “saying how important I believe that it was that Centerstage get this contract because of its locality and its connection with the community. So I make this move with a heavy heart because I value them and they’ve got some of the real pillars of the community in this, but I represent all the people in this community.”

The city paid Centerstage $70,000 to manage the facility in 2009, and then $76,500 per year over the next five years.

Dockstader said his understanding of the management concept was that Centerstage was an asset to the community, so the city would support the theatre by allowing them to operate the facility, use the Knutzen Family Theatre for its own productions and to rent it out to the community.

The city renewed the contract in 2012 and recently entered into negotiations with the theatre, which was the sole responsible responsive bidder for the project this year when the city sent out a request for proposals in February.

But Dockstader said Centerstage was “blindsided” when city officials said they reached a negotiation impasse and decided to allow the contract to expire.

Negotiations

John Hutton, director of the city’s Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services Department, said he met with Dockstader, Bryce and Dumas Bay Centre manager Rob Ettinger twice to negotiate a new contract before the city ultimately decided to terminate the agreement.

During the first meeting, the theatre asked the city for an $8,900 per year increase to cover inflation.

“They said they need that to remain viable,” Hutton recalled. “I was amenable to that with some conditions.”

He asked if Bryce would take on some maintenance costs within the Knutzen Family Theatre if the city granted his requested increase.

“They have almost sole exclusive use of the theater itself, with a couple of minor exceptions, it’s a Centerstage facility in this agreement,” Hutton noted. “So any wear and tear would be from Centerstage activities.”

But Bryce said he was surprised by Hutton’s request.

“He was not specific at that point, so I said, ‘We are already doing a fair amount of maintenance, so what do you mean by everything within the fabric of the building?’” Bryce recalled asking Hutton. “And he said anything that’s not the walls, heating and air conditioning. Everything else is your responsibility to maintain and/or replace as necessary.”

Dockstader, who called this request a “whammy,” said shifting maintenance responsibilities to the theatre proposed a “real risk” to Centerstage.

“Here’s Centerstage that’s always running hand to mouth, it’s not necessarily a profit-making business,” Dockstader said. “This was like a blindside because there were no specifics. So we talked about needing to understand this better.”

Bryce asked Hutton for a comprehensive list of items the city would require the theatre to maintain and the parties agreed to meet again in two weeks.

During the second meeting, Hutton said Centerstage said they were unwilling to take on any maintenance responsibility.

“They said no they wouldn’t take on any maintenance and they wanted more money,” said Hutton, noting Bryce asked for an additional $15,000 per year instead. “I believe my exact quote was, ‘That’s an interesting negotiation tactic to say no to everything we propose and to almost double your request of funds.’”

However, Bryce said that was not the case. While he did ask for the price increase, he also told Hutton he was willing to take on maintenance costs, pending further conversations to determine what those costs would actually mean.

“We really needed to understand better what the maintenance needs are,” Dockstader said. “In order to talk about this thing we can’t buy a pig and a poke. So the idea was that Alan would get together with Ettinger and do a walk through [at the Dumas Bay Centre] and see what are the things that really need to be done here. Maybe there are things we can take on.”

Hutton said he told Bryce and Dockstader he didn’t have the ability to honor their request, “I was very clear that I did not have $15,000 laying around to add to their contract … I said anything that I do is hurting the rest of the department and I don’t have the ability to do that and they understood that clearly.”

Following the second meeting, Bryce also told Hutton that he would consult with the deputy mayor — a longtime Centerstage supporter — to see if she could help them find an outside revenue source. However, Burbidge said this was a matter of negotiation with city staff and she should not get involved with it, according to Bryce. He told Hutton that Burbidge was unable to help and that he would draft a new proposal for the next meeting.

At this point, Hutton said he felt they had reached an “impasse” with negotiations, which prompted him to look through the finances of the entire operation of the Knutzen Family Theatre.

“It became clear as day that the more prudent decision for the city would be to not be in a contract with anybody on this at this point and that it would be better for us to take over management again of the facility …,” Hutton said.

He consulted the mayor, the chief of staff and finance director about his findings that the city can bring in over $150,000 per year with the money they save from paying an outside manager, as well as rental revenue.

The mayor said that both Hutton and Ettinger recommended that they did not believe the Knutzen Family Theatre was being run in the best interest of the city.

“My understanding is, over the course of six years since 2009, we’ve paid Centerstage, just in regard to their services, roughly $450,000 to operate this facility and then if you add yet another $100,000 in regard to grants and awards of other city funding, the total comes to $549,000 over six years,” Ferrell said. “That is a great deal of money to provide for one organization. Other than the value of the productions, we haven’t really received anything back.”

Hutton, who recently attended Centerstage’s new musical “For All That” with his wife, said this was strictly a business decision and is not a reflection of the theatre itself.

“We just think we can manage the spaces better ourselves and that would be more advantageous to the city and the overall facility,” he said.

Ferrell agrees.

“Let me be very clear, we want Centerstage to succeed,” he said, noting he was also concerned about the operation’s lack of income to the city. “We want Centerstage to use this facility. We have just made the business decision that it’s not in the city’s best interest to have them run the facility. This is a business decision based on real numbers.”

However, the contract stipulates that the city will not receive any income from the productions at Knutzen Family Theatre and Bryce said the arrangement was not meant to bring in money for the city.

At the third negotiation meeting on Wednesday, city staff handed Bryce and Dockstader a letter  stating they decided to allow the contract to expire before they got a chance to read their new proposal.

Dockstader, a retired corporate attorney, called the city’s impasse “an absolute stinking falsehood.”

“I do not see under those circumstances how any reasonable person with half a brain could figure that there is a negotiation impasse when we had left a meeting with the intention of coming back,” Dockstader said. “The city did not even listen to a counter-proposal that was specifically designed to come back and address at least, in part, some of the issues where we were a part on.”

Bryce agreed.

“So the negotiation was ongoing, they knew it was ongoing and they just decided to stop it,” he said. “If they deny it was ongoing, they are not telling you the truth.”

Dockstader read their new proposal to city staff anyway, which asked for $10,000 more per year, with the caveat that they would pay $3,000 to the city per year to help repay the city for any maintenance costs they incur. Following the meeting, Dockstader and Bryce went to a local pub to “drown their sorrows,” when Hutton called minutes later to say the city would not reconsider, Dockstader said.

“I’ve seen this coming from the word go,” Bryce said. “I’m surprised they’ve done it so quickly. I’ve seen it coming whenever the Performing Arts and Conference Center really started to solidify.”

Bryce said that Chief of Staff Brian Wilson wrote a letter to the board, expressing the city’s desire to continue their relationship with Centerstage as a rental client.

“They are either being really disingenuous or they haven’t done their work and looked at the numbers because if we’re getting a management fee of $75,000 and to do our five shows each year, it would cost us about $45,000 in rent, so it would cost us another $110,000,” Bryce said, quoting Shakespeare, “Dream on MacDuff — where are we going to find that? It’s just not going to happen.”

Save Centerstage

Bryce set up a website, savecenterstage.org, where Centerstage supporters can email the City Council and urge them to reconsider.

As of Tuesday, over 500 people — the majority who live outside of Federal Way and even in other countries — have expressed their concern to the council.

“It is with great dismay that I, from my home in Berlin, Germany, hear word of Centerstage Theatre’s possible closure at the city’s hand,” wrote Jonathon Collis, noting that he attends upwards of 150 performances per year. He continued, “Attending a show at Centerstage always felt like spending the afternoon with a friend — a friend worth spending longer on the bus back and forth from Queen Anne or the U-District than with, because the time was of such quality and the theatre clearly filled the niche of a solid community company.”

Other emails were written by Federal Way residents.

“Centerstage is a treasure to our community,” wrote Jacquie Witherrite. “We need it more than ever.”

Jim Burbidge, who is married to the deputy mayor, noted that the theatre is a valuable community asset.

“One of the primary responsibilities of a city government is to maintain and enhance its quality of life. Continuing Centerstage’s management relationship at Dumas Bay Centre is a very cost-effective way to support them. It is working well for both Centerstage and for the city of Federal Way right now. Why change?”

Donn Porter, of Federal Way, wrote: “This move is appalling. It is simply beyond belief that the city would eliminate such a jewel of the community. Where is your common sense?”

Others, including Gary Roberts, criticized the city’s decision and pointed to the soon-to-be-constructed $32 million Performing Arts and Conference Center.

“This move by the mayor is simply a biased political move to justify the indulgent purchase of the [Performing Arts and Conference Center] and the hiring of a manager commanding six figures,” Roberts wrote. “This appalling, disgraceful, wasteful slap-in-the-face-to-the-community move has nothing to do with developing the community. The wasteful financing of the [arts center] should have been put back in developing Centerstage and Dumas Bay.”

However, Ferrell said the refrain will always be, “You don’t need us anymore because now you have the Performing Arts and Conference Center. We can’t be subject to that argument indefinitely,” he said. “The two have nothing to do with each other … It’s never a good time to end a relationship. It’s difficult. But we don’t want to end the relationship; we want to transform and change the relationship from them being the sole caretakers and running the facility to a tenant and we need to change that relationship. And sometimes change is difficult but it’s necessary.”

But Dockstader said the city’s financial support of Centerstage is “indispensable and they knew it.”

The Centerstage board also noted that in the intervening six years, Centerstage has grown in stature and has experienced region-wide critical acclaim for many of its productions. The theatre is also a prime reason that the Knutzen Family Theatre is viewed as “a premier theater venue and the city as a wise and enlightened supporter of the arts.”

“For All That” recently received high reviews and Dockstader heard that a prestigious theater has expressed interest in the production.

“This is the kind of quality that Centerstage is bringing to Federal Way and instead of the general view of Federal Way as being the armpit of Western Washington, we’ve got people who are looking down here and saying there is a bright light in Federal Way and the city has decided that they want to turn that light off,” he said.