Cultural Council Agenda and Packet 2013 05 16

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May 6, 2013 Dear Mr. Fleming: Thank you for meeting with us to discuss the attached proposed Arts Center Use Policy which we drafted at your request. Unfortunately, it seems we ended our meeting without resolving our primary concerns which are: 1. Ensuring the Louisville Center for the Arts is rededicated as an arts and cultural facility with a priority use for events open to Louisville residents, and; 2. Improving scheduling management and flexibility so that use of the facility for arts and cultural activities can be maximized. In 1993, dedication of the Louisville Center for the Arts was formally codified for a 20 year period for the primary purpose of housing community arts activities. The documents on record indicate that while private rentals and non -arts usage could occur, those uses were intended to be subordinate to the arts uses and there was no minimum time allocation for such uses. A governing board was set in place to evaluate and respond to such requests. For reasons that are not entirely clear, the original agreements have not been fully honored and the most significant deviations (placing a high priority on City related use and imposing user fees on the arts groups) have been to the detriment of the arts uses and to the advantage of the City administration purposes. To now assert a mandate for a guaranteed minimum of private rentals, including those occurring on weekends conflicts with the original agreement and should be a point of community discussion. As the attached analysis shows, private rentals made by the City have been increasing over the last three years, especially during the prime weekend period which includes Friday evening, Saturday day, Saturday evening and Sunday (note: for the purposes of the analysis, these times were identified as four potential rental times as Saturday is very often split between a day reservation and an evening reservation, thus accommodating two user groups) (also note that this analysis compares number of reservations rather than hours reserved to more accurately reflect how the schedule is meeting the needs of the various user groups) The Louisville Center for the Arts is a unique facility and we believe its highest and best use is for art and cultural events which are open to our citizens and which also attract visitors to our community and contribute to its general vitality. Continuing the City administration's recent practice of reserving space for private events on prime usage days months in advance is counterproductive to that goal and we do not agree that this is in the best interest of the community. While we understand this is a shared facility, we believe that weekend rentals create a natural and unavoidable conflict with the primary purpose of the building and thus should not be given advance scheduling priority.