There’s a problem with the pianos at the Performing Arts Center in downtown Anchorage.
“We will be shuffling pianos constantly,” said Wendy Odden, a PAC event manager and co-director of production. “It is going to be a shuffle all year long.”
The issue is not so much the pianos themselves — it’s finding a place to put them. They would normally live in the basement but sometimes the building’s freight elevator just stops working. Now, Odden squirrels them away on the main floor.
“There's kind of an alcove that we are calling ‘piano storage,’” she said. “I can put two pianos there. Another one will stay in the pit.”
The freight elevator is one of many issues at the PAC. There’s also water in all sorts of places it shouldn’t be, theater seats that no longer attach to the floor, an electrical system that can’t power the whole building and lighting that won’t light the whole stage. That’s just the beginning.
Codie Costello is the president of the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts, the nonprofit that runs the PAC. There isn’t enough money coming in to maintain and operate the city-owned building, she said. She’s hoping for a major funding boost from the municipality to keep the cultural institution afloat, but city officials say the budget is tight. On top of that, they say, the PAC is just part of a broader problem: Anchorage is full of iconic, city-owned buildings that were constructed in the 1980s and are now all slowly aging without a long-term maintenance plan.
“It was, for certain, a blessing at the time,” said Bill Falsey, chief administrative officer with the mayor’s office. “It does create a challenge now.”
The way funding works at the PAC is a little complicated.
Money comes in from donations, fundraisers and alcohol sales, as well as ticket fees, though attendance has still not rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.
A big chunk of the budget — about 50 percent — comes from the municipality. That’s because the city owns the building, and then pays the nonprofit to maintain and operate it.
This year the nonprofit is renegotiating its contract with the city for the first time in a decade, and it’s asking for a lot more money to address the building’s many needs, about $4 million. That’s well over double what it has gotten in the past.
“There comes a time where you can't extend any longer,” Costello said. “You know, the anti-wrinkle cream stops working.”
The requested $4 million budget doesn’t even take into account bigger capital projects, like replacing the HVAC system and the roof. There are so many repairs needed at the institution that brings floods of people downtown for theater and music, comedy and dance.
Costello said she’s not ready to think about the worst case scenario: What if they can’t afford to make the fixes?
“You know, it is what keeps me up at night,” she said. “All these things keep me up at night.”
But it’s the people she works with that keep her going, she said. And they keep the building going, finding ways to make sure it’s safe and functioning, ready for shows.
“I have the scrappiest team on the planet,” she said. “They're incredible. I don't know how they do it, but they're like sleuths, and they find this stuff and make it happen, to extend the life of things in a safe way.”
Falsey said the administration is totally committed to keeping the PAC open and vibrant. It’s great for the city’s economy, since it brings so many people to nearby businesses every time there’s an event, he said, and it’s part of what makes downtown Anchorage the place it is.
So the PAC is a priority for the city. But there’s a problem. It’s just one of many municipality-owned buildings around the city built in the 80s with state oil money. You’d recognize a lot of the others on the list, like the Sullivan Arena and the Loussac Library.
Falsey said they’re all aging at the same time and there was never a plan to fund long-term maintenance.
It’s likely that voters will eventually have to decide whether they want to help pay for major repairs and other capital projects at those buildings through bond propositions, he said. The city is preparing proposals for the PAC for the next election.
The PAC’s management fee is a different story. That’s part of the city’s annual budget. Falsey said he recognizes the institution is in need, but all signs point to a tough budget year for the municipality.
“There are a lot of community needs and, candidly, not all of the resources to do the things that we think the community wants,” he said. “And so that means that we are having to make some difficult trade-offs or to pull some rabbits out of hats.”
The mayor’s office hasn’t finalized the budget yet, but Falsey said the nonprofit likely won’t get the $4 million it asked for. And, he said, instead of signing a contract for 10 years like they normally would, they’re talking about 18 months. He’s not sure what solutions they'll find in that time, but he is sure of one thing.
“We're not gonna let the Performing Arts Center fail,” he said. “The Performing Arts Center is going to remain open.”
Back at the PAC, Wendy Odden was in the Atwood theater, looking up at the rigging.
It’s all she’s ever wanted to do, she said. Sometimes, though, it can be really hard. The hours are long and things are always going wrong.
“And then we get to see the show,” she said, “And it works, and it's magic, and the audience loves it. And you're just like, ‘Okay, that's why I do this job, right there.’”
She said she loves the building and what it represents to the community — everyone who works here does.
