Jurassic rock

With changes in the concert climate and competition just around the corner, is the Civic Center on the verge of extinction?

by Richard P. Morin

Hanging over the receptionist's desk on the second floor of the Providence Civic Center are old pictures of Bruce Springsteen, Neil Diamond, Sting, and Diana Ross, all of whom performed at the downtown arena in the 1970s and '80s. And like many of these aging stars, the Civic Center's heyday may be far behind it.

After several years of mounting debt that has yet to bottom out, the Civic Center is expected to be $1.5 million in the red this year. Not only that, but scandal, political fighting, corruption, and labor disputes have long plagued the downtown arena -- all of which begs the question: Is the city-owned Civic Center worth pumping more taxpayer money into in order to save it? Providence Mayor Vincent "Buddy" Cianci, Jr. believes so and so does the City Council, both of whom recently appropriated $2 million in city bonds to pay for renovations to the aging Civic Center.

"The fact of the matter is the Civic Center is paid off. It is costing the taxpayers of Providence less than it ever has," says Cianci. "All we need to do now is to put a smile on it."

Yes, the bonds the city floated to pay for the arena are paid, but the Civic Center needs more than just a "smile" to maintain even a modicum of competitiveness in a region saturated with newer concert venues and sports arenas.

Indeed, walking around the 25-year-old Civic Center is like stepping back in time. Compared to Boston's gleaming new FleetCenter, this place looks ancient. The carpets are old and ragged. The Seiko advertisement on the Civic Center's door is wrinkled and faded. The brick and concrete, which looked modern when the arena was first built, now seem sad and institutional.

The lobby of the administrative offices is dark, while no luxury boxes or corporate suites class up the inside, as is the standard of newer arenas. The concourse serves food and drinks from pushcarts, making the hallways at times almost impassable during events.

But unlike the old Boston Garden, which was obsolete for years before it was replaced by the FleetCenter, the Civic Center also has no mystique, nothing to keep patrons and shows coming back, despite its inadequacies. And any lofty status that the arena once enjoyed in Rhode Island has been eclipsed by such newer buildings as the forthcoming Providence Place mall, the renovated T.F. Green Airport, and the state-owned Rhode Island Convention Center.

In many respects, the Civic Center has become a neglected stepchild in the Ocean State. But this could change with some good marketing, a little bit of luck, a strong commitment on the part of Providence, and a recognition on the part of the state that the Civic Center benefits all Rhode Islanders.

After two decades of financial and political neglect, city officials not only took the important step of allocating money to make repairs to the arena, but they recently made the long-overdue decision to privatize the management of the Civic Center. Last August, Providence signed a seven-year contract with the New York-based Ogden Entertainment Group, Inc. in hopes of once again making the Civic Center profitable. But is it too little too late? Ogden doesn't think so.

"We [Ogden] saw opportunity here," says Lee Esckilsen, the new executive director of the Civic Center. "We saw the incredible work the mayor has done with downtown. And we firmly believe that the Civic Center can once again be a part of that renaissance -- a renaissance it helped create."

Ogden specializes in taking publicly managed facilities and privatizing them. Its track record in the US is good. In New England, Ogden successfully privatized the Hartford Civic Center, and it manages dozens of arenas worldwide, including such well-known facilities as the Great Western Forum in Los Angeles, the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim, and the University of Massachusetts's William D. Mullins Center.

Providence chose Ogden over several other private firms for its proven management record and its 50-percent ownership interest in the Metropolitan Entertainment Group (MEG) -- one of the most prominent concert promoters in the country. With the Civic Center's concert bookings down in recent years, Ogden's drawing power was indeed enticing.

Still, even if the Civic Center is spruced up and Ogden attracts more concerts to Providence, changes in the concert industry may be such that the downtown arena will never again see a year like 1986, when, as the eighth-busiest concert facility in the nation, it was voted the best small-market arena in an industry-wide poll.

"I don't think you will ever see a year like 1986 in this building again. That's unfortunate, but it's reality," says Esckilsen, who served as the Civic Center's assistant executive director from 1985 to 1988.

But despite this dire outlook, Esckilsen says, the Civic Center still has a chance of breaking even -- or even of being profitable -- with the proper management and bookings. And Cianci says the point of the Civic Center was never to make money for Providence but to spur economic growth downtown. To that end, he says, the Civic Center has been a success -- a statement some people would be hard-pressed to disagree with.

For Cianci and the rest of Providence, the problems lie more in the future. With the city perennially strapped for cash, Providence can't float the Civic Center much longer. And if the city closed the arena for financial reasons, there would be a huge void in Rhode Island's entertainment and sports offerings, and the financial reverberations would extend all the way from downtown to the state's coffers -- a fact that seems lost on many Rhode Island officials.

Indeed, for the last three years, Providence officials have argued for some form of state assistance for the Civic Center, which, despite being built by the city, has benefited all of Rhode Island. But these pleas have fallen on deaf ears, as Governor Lincoln Almond and the General Assembly have been reluctant to get behind this less-than-politically-connected cause.

State Representative Antonio Pires (D-Pawtucket), chairman of the House Finance Committee, has gone so far as to say that helping the beleaguered Civic Center is not one of the legislature's top priorities -- an irony, considering that the General Assembly has agreed to spend millions on the renovation of McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket.

MUCH OF THE Civic Center's financial problems have been attributed to changes in the concert industry itself. In the last decade, popular, touring rock 'n' roll bands began playing outdoor amphitheaters, not the smaller and older arenas, such as the Civic Center. As a result, experts say, places like the Great Woods Performing Arts Center in Mansfield, Massachusetts, helped change the New England concert industry from a year-round business to a summer-based one.

Seeing these industry changes, Frank J. Russo, a nationally recognized concert promoter based in Cranston, stopped producing shows at the Civic Center in the early '90s. But unlike Russo, Providence was slow to react to the changing concert business.

"I got out. I could see what was coming," says Russo, referring to the decline of arena concerts. "Unfortunately, I don't think the Civic Center's management did. They didn't seem to have a plan to deal with the changes. And without a plan, it is hard to attract stars to Rhode Island."

Indeed, while venues in other regions of the country tried to replace rock bands with country & western acts, Providence looked to sports events and other family shows. Unfortunately, these types of events don't come close to generating the kind of revenues that sold-out concerts do. According to a 1996 private study of the arena's woes by consultant Peter Nawrocki, the Civic Center's growing deficit was a direct result of this switch in bookings.

"Every civic arena -- Pittsburgh, Hartford, Buffalo -- is trying to catch up to where they were 15 years ago, and it is not going to happen," says Russo, who was the Civic Center's leading tenant for close to two decades.

But these places need to do more than catch up -- they must compete with newer arenas and concert venues as well. Starting with the Worcester Centrum in 1982, several concert venues have opened in southern New England in the last two decades -- the Hartford Civic Center, the FleetCenter and HarborLights in Boston, Great Woods, and two tribal casinos in Connecticut known as Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods Resort and Casino.

These facilities have dug deep into Providence's one-time dominance of the New England concert scene -- an impact Providence has never fully recovered from. "There used to be a time when you played New England, [you] played the Civic Center, because it was the most modern place to play," says Russo. "That's not the case anymore."

Even worse, the Civic Center faces competition from within Rhode Island as well. Soon after arriving on the scene, the Convention Center attracted away the home, boat, and car shows, which were once a staple of the Civic Center. Esckilsen estimates that the arena loses upwards of $250,000 each year as a result.

"The slice of the pie got smaller and smaller [with all the newer facilities]," adds Stephen Lombardi, former executive director of the Civic Center, who stepped down in October. "But I never thought it was going to get as bad as it got."

But despite these obstacles, Providence officials, after contemplating selling the Civic Center last year, seem to have renewed their commitment to the downtown arena. At the very least, they have conceded that it can no longer go it alone in an industry now consolidated in the hands of a few (see "Concentrated rock," News, March 20). This is why they hired Ogden.

"There is strength in numbers," says Esckilsen, referring to Ogden's network of concert facilities worldwide and its part ownership in MEG. "As a public entity, Providence was not set up to understand many of the idiosyncrasies of the concert and sports industry. We bring to the table a wealth of information and sources that let us know who's touring, what deals are being made, and why."

Gary Bongiovanni, executive editor of Pollstar, a magazine that covers the concert industry, agrees that Providence's decision to hire Ogden was a solid one. "One thing Ogden can be is more of an advocate for the building. And Ogden, having a large network, has more influence than a free-standing arena [when it comes to attracting concerts]," he says.

IN RECENT YEARS, Providence officials also have pressed the state to lend a helping hand to the ailing Civic Center. Their rationale for a state subsidy for the arena is simple: not only has the state-owned Convention Center damaged the fortunes of the Civic Center, but since all of Rhode Island benefits from the presence of the arena, it is unfair for Providence alone to bear the burden of its debt.

Still, given the present political climate in Rhode Island, the likelihood of a state subsidy for the arena is slim. Right now, Almond is touting a new arena for the University of Rhode Island (URI), while the General Assembly seems dead-set against providing Providence with any more state aid.

Even so, Cianci and the City Council continue to push legislators to include the Civic Center in Rhode Island's Payments In Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) program, which provides cities and towns hosting non-profit (and thus tax-exempt) groups with more state aid.

"I would hope they feel a responsibility to help support the Civic Center, because, quite frankly, the Convention Center has led to much of the Civic Center's demise," says City Council president Evelyn Fargnoli.

But state Senator John Roney (D-Providence) and state Representative Paul Moura (D-Providence) say that legislators fear that the inclusion of the Civic Center in the PILOT program would open the floodgates for other sites, such as the Newport mansions. "Nobody seems in favor of expanding the base of PILOT," says Moura.

As for Almond, his spokesperson, Lisa Pelosi, says he would be willing "to listen" if Providence officials approached him about state financial assistance (which, Pelosi says, they have yet to do). But political insiders speculate that, ultimately, the governor will not get behind such a move.

First, Almond and Cianci are bitter foes. More important, the governor wants to build a 7500-seat sports arena on the URI campus, and by letting the Civic Center, which the Rams play several home games at, continue to fall into disrepair, he will strengthen his call for a new URI arena.

"I would hope the governor wouldn't be blinded to the importance of the Civic Center to Rhode Island by his ambitions to build an arena at URI," says Cianci. "Plus, he helped Pawtucket. Why can't he help us? We send just as much money up to the State House [in the form of sales and income taxes generated by events at the Civic Center] as do the PawSox."

It was only last year when Almond and the General Assembly approved $12 million in bonds for the renovation of McCoy Stadium. But in addition to political connections (speaker of the House John Harwood and Pires are from Pawtucket), the reason Pawtucket received state help and Providence has not could be that Rhode Islanders have more of an emotional attachment to the PawSox.

Unlike McCoy Stadium, the Civic Center has a checkered past. In the 1970s and '80s, the Civic Center's reputation was sullied by rock concerts that left downtown Providence strewn with trash, while the city's police station often filled with detained rowdy concertgoers. At one point, concerts hosted by the Civic Center got so bad that Cianci publicly contemplated banning them from the downtown facility.

BUT EVEN IF the Civic Center were to receive some form of state assistance, it would still be left with solving its labor problems, which Russo says remain the biggest impediment to the downtown arena's success.

"The cost of producing a show at the Civic Center, because of the unions, is just too much," he says. In fact, at times the arena's large staff has caused production expenses to outstrip profit. Still, the unions aren't solely to blame for the Civic Center's labor problems. They are more of a symptom of the management, whose lack of direction and frequent turnover have allowed the unions to gain the upper hand in negotiations.

Even higher on the corporate food chain, the Civic Center Authority, the guiding force behind the arena, has been plagued by political battles over appointments to its board. And these battles have often distracted board members from the more pressing issues, such as the need to reduce the Civic Center's staff.

When contacted by the Phoenix, Civic Center Authority executive director Victor Fera declined comment on all issues relating to the arena, saying, "It's only a one-hour-a-month job, and I'd prefer you'd talk to Lee Esckilsen." His comment, of course, demonstrates just how lacking the Authority is in the leadership department.

Indeed, after years of clamoring for the reduction of the arena's staff (one of the largest and best paid of any comparable facility in New England), the Authority signed a new contract with the arena's four unions in March -- a contract that does not include provisions for a smaller staff and for Ogden's need to move full-time employees to part-time work during downtimes at the arena, a common practice at many civic centers.

These contract concessions, as well as previous ones on the part of the city, such as providing part-time employees with full-time benefits (a practice that ended with the new contract), have cost the Civic Center millions of dollars.

"We've set them [Ogden] up for failure," says City Council member Patricia Nolan. By this she means that Ogden does not have the power to hire and fire employees, appoint its own executive director, or create its own budget. All these duties still belong to the Authority and the city, which have proven to be an ineffective manager of the Civic Center.

WITH THE CIVIC CENTER'S receiving some form of state subsidy unlikely any time soon, Esckilsen is faced with getting the arena back on its feet through more traditional means, such as selling corporate boxes and renaming the arena after a corporate sponsor. But these proposals may not spell salvation -- who, after all, would want their name on an aging building with a host of problems when they could have it on a shiny new one?

One realistic hope the Civic Center does have is that Ogden's network of contacts will attract more rock concerts to Providence. But Esckilsen is also right when he says, "The building itself has to work harder." It needs to attract more advertising and corporate sponsorship.

Although Esckilsen will not identify any local businesses interested in sponsoring the Civic Center, he is quick to say that businesses downtown need to become more active participants. "The Civic Center has been subsidizing business in the downtown area for a number of years, and with events becoming tighter and resources more scarce, it is time for that revenue to come back the other way. There has to be more sharing," he says.

But even if new streams of revenue and increased bookings are realized, Esckilsen hedges when it comes to backing up Cianci's claim last August that the Civic Center would be profitable in 18 months. "Whether or not the Civic Center will be taking in enough money to cover its debt and turn a profit [18 months from now] we don't know," says Esckilsen. "But that is the goal."

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