The Maple Leaf Performing Arts Center has taken another step toward opening next summer with the hiring of an executive director.

Dana Beth Evans started work last week. She was hired at the Nov. 7 Maple Leaf Management Group meeting.

The 2,000-seat entertainment venue is going up just outside Nashville limits, behind the Salt Creek Plaza shopping area and Brown County Health & Living Community off Hawthorne Drive. Ground was broken in July.

Evans said she found out about the job opening when her husband read about the project in the newspaper. He is originally from Bloomington.

“I said, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s the perfect job for me.’ He said, ‘Yes, it is. You need to get ahold of them and find out when they’re going to start interviewing,’” she said.

“It (the job posting) had been live for 45 minutes and I already had my application, my resume to Indeed. I was one of the first to apply.”

The job pays $90,000 a year. Evans will be paid through the Brown County Convention and Visitors Bureau payroll until operating books are in place at the Maple Leaf.

Maple Leaf Management Group co-President Barry Herring said the CVB would be reimbursed monthly for Evans’ salary through the construction loan. The county took out a $12.5 million loan to build the venue.

Evans is in the process of moving from Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where she worked as the general manager of the Community Arts Center, a historic theater. She and her husband, Raymond, are renting a home in Bloomington until they sell their home in Pennsylvania; then, they plan to move to Brown County.

Evans is originally from Irvington, Kentucky. She began her career managing theaters 20 years ago in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, working as the community’s Main Street manager, a program which seeks to celebrate a community’s character and revitalize its economy.

“Within a year, I had turned their program around,” Evans said.

The city council then came to Evans and asked if she would be in charge of a historic theater restoration project that had come to a standstill.

She was the executive director of the Heritage Council and Historic State Theater there for eight years, then moved to Bloomington after getting married. She ran the Historic Tivoli Theater in Spencer after helping to lead that renovation. She then managed the Monroe County History Center before leaving that job to move to Pennsylvania, where the couple lived for about a year-and-a-half.

“We decided Williamsport wasn’t a good fit for us, so we wanted to come back home and be closer to grandbabies,” she said. The couple has two young grandchildren and three sons.

Being closer to grandchildren was another reason she decided to apply to be the executive director.

“It was just a great opportunity. I was getting closer to the area, closer to grandbabies, closer to family. It’s a great job opportunity, being around from the ground up,” she said. “My background is in historic theaters and reopening historic theaters, but being involved from the ground up of a new facility is pretty amazing. Not a lot of people get to do that.”

Bruce Gould, who chairs the HR/staffing committee for the Maple Leaf Management Group, led the director search. Seventy-eight people applied initially. Gould said Evans stood out from the beginning due to her experience managing historical theaters and her background in Indiana.

“If someone already had experience running this type of facility, that was important to us rather than someone saying, ‘I can learn how to do it,’ because we don’t have anyone here to train,” Gould said. “They need to know what they’re doing when they get here.”

Gould narrowed the applicants to 20 people sending information to the management group’s selection committee. County commissioner Diana Biddle, management group co-President Barry Herring, management group construction committee Chairman Jim Schultz and Gould served on that committee. The list was then cut to eight before reducing it to four to start doing phone conversations and in-person interviews.

“She rose to the top quickly,” Gould said of Evans.

The historic theater where she worked in Pennsylvania seated 2,200 people, and performers there were similar to what the Maple Leaf is aiming to have, Gould said.

“She knows the marketing side of it and she’s done pretty much everything there,” he said.

“She’s going to fit right in.”

Evans said she is going to bring “a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of energy” to her new job.

“I love being out and being part of the community. I think if you’ve been given a lot, then a lot is expected,” she said.

Until the Maple Leaf is complete, Evans will work out of a second-floor office at the Brown County Highway Department.

Along with getting out and meeting new people, Evans said she will look over the strategic planning work that has been happening, go over architect plans, look at contracts and work on policies and procedures.

She also is listening to meeting recordings when the Maple Leaf was discussed. She knows not everyone in the community is happy about the venue opening.

“I’m listening to all sides of it and not forming an opinion because there’s three sides to every story. There’s your side, their side, and then somewhere in the middle is where you’ll find the truth. I’m being very open-minded and not getting input from anybody,” she said.

“If you don’t like it, that’s fine. You don’t have to like it, but let’s talk about what you don’t like about it, and make sure everybody fully understands what’s happening before they make that decision of, ‘I don’t like it …’ I plan on being the common ground person.”

She will be attending all future Maple Leaf meetings, too.

”It’s important to get out to start that dialog of, ‘Who are you bringing? What’s happening? What’s going to be going on?’ Plus, we’re going to need volunteers. Volunteers are going to be an extremely important part of the Maple Leaf,” she said.

“It will take everybody.”

The management group is finishing a contract with national booking agency Live Nation which will be responsible for booking 26 shows a year. Evans will book the rest.

“You also have to be realistic that it’s a 2,000-seat venue and the concerts that go to the stadiums, the Jason Aldeans, the Garth Brooks and the Taylor Swifts aren’t coming to here. Everybody needs to get that expectation and understand those are big arena names. We are a small arena,” she said.

“We’re going to get people who are starting out or that are coming down. You might get that really big name that’s wanting to do small, intimate venues, but you can’t hang your hat on that all the time.”

She said the Maple Leaf could even be a sort of “launch pad” for up-and-coming artists. “That would be a great thing to be known for,” she said.

At the Nov. 13 Brown County Convention and Visitors Commission meeting, Herring, who is also a CVC member, said that Live Nation would present the Maple Leaf with 75 different national act options and they can accept 26 of those. Most artists with talent agents would be booked through Live Nation, he said.

CVC member Patty Frensemeier asked how the smaller Brown County Playhouse downtown will be involved with the Maple Leaf. Frensemeier also serves on the Playhouse board.

“The idea was that she (Evans) and Suzannah (Zody) from the Playhouse would sit down, say, ‘This is an act that sells less than 400 seats. Then, OK, the Playhouse can do that. This act will fill between 400 and 2,000 seats, so it’s more Maple Leaf,’” Herring said. “They will have to work together.”