Shovels will break ground at the site of the Maple Leaf Performing Arts Center on Tuesday morning, July 10.
The announcement comes more than a year after a group of Brown County business owners and government officials stood in front of a crowd in the Brown County Playhouse to announce plans for a new, government-owned, 2,000-seat music venue funded by innkeepers tax.
The groundbreaking will begin at 10 a.m. Parking will be available at the Brown County YMCA, near the future building site behind Brown County Health & Living Community.
Indiana legislators and public officials are expected to attend. Members of the public can bring a shovel to help break ground, too, says a press release from the Brown County Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Brandt Construction Inc. will be the lead contractor. That firm was the lowest bidder, with a final total of $7,808,833. The bid included the construction of the venue itself, the site work, and the paving of a new road to get to it, Maple Leaf Boulevard.
The Maple Leaf Management Group negotiated to cut $743,167 from the initial bid, which brought it down from $8,552,000.
The county has borrowed $12.5 million to build the center on Snyder Farm Land, including $2 million for the ground.
To get some items on their wish list, project organizers are now seeking other forms of funding, including donations.
“We’re about $680,000 away to get the venue of our dreams,” said project co-president Barry Herring.
Cuts included not having wooden beams in the venue’s lobby and not paving the parking field, he reported at the June 14 Brown County Convention and Visitors Commission meeting.
“We have laminate beams in the lobby and a gravel parking lot so far. Everything else, the sound system, the light system, the seating and everything else remains the same,” he said. “Once you’re inside the building, you get through the lobby, the concert experience hasn’t changed at all.”
The drive aisles and handicap spots in the parking lot will be paved, and the roads around the building will be either paved or concrete, said Kevin Ault, president of the Brown County Convention and Visitors Commission.
“The lobby is still going to be nice. The laminate beams will look more industrial than the tree-trunk kind of wood beams. We all still want that.”
Herring said he wants to avoid taking on additional debt in the form of a loan or bond. He said he wasn’t sure if the project could handle the additional debt.
“We had some outside sources interested in purchasing any bond that we would produce, but I haven’t looked at our numbers to make sure we could afford any more debt,” he said.
If the extra $680,000 was donated to the project, they wouldn’t have to worry about paying it back, he said.
Maple Leaf bills are to be paid first with proceeds from the concert venue, then with innkeepers tax if needed. Innkeepers tax is paid by people who rent overnight lodging in the county.
Previously, nearly all of the innkeepers tax — which totaled over $800,000 last year — was going to the Brown County Convention and Visitors Bureau to market Brown County as a tourist destination, pay staff and run its downtown Visitors Center. That work will continue, but with a reduced budget, if the Maple Leaf needs help covering its costs.
The naming rights for the venue, the beer garden and family garden have not been sold yet. If that happens, that could bring in the additional money needed to pave the lot or install the beams by local company The Beamery, Herring said.
“The parking lot I can live without, but the beams … The Beamery, I’d like to use them. It is more Brown County with trees,” he said.
Construction committee Chairman Jim Schultz suggested that the Maple Leaf could look at the Brown County Art Gallery for inspiration, where the lobby, galleries and sidewalks are named in honor of donors. “That’s a good example of philanthropy at work,” he said.
At the June 14 CVC meeting, board member Mike Patrick said donations could come anonymously from the community, like the recent anonymous donation made to save a historic house in Nashville from destruction. “If there’s someone in the community willing to spend $26,000 to move that blue house, surely there is somebody willing to spend $600,000 to pave a parking lot,” he said.
Creating a fundraising committee was suggested.
CVC member Derek Clifford said he was glad to hear that Herring was unsure if the Maple Leaf project could handle taking out additional debt.
“That’s always been kind of my concern is that, I said before, you guys get a little tunnel vision … of ‘We can do a little bit more,’ then the next thing you know, you’re way more borrowed and the numbers don’t work anymore on your spreadsheet,” he said.
“I’d be fine with, for several years, the CVC taking $200,000 a year (of innkeepers tax) to keep (the Maple Leaf) going. My fear is it starts sucking $500,000 and $600,000. I’m sure that’s probably everybody’s fear on this commission. Then, marketing starts to suffer and everything else,” he said.
Earlier this month, construction crews were putting up new fences for Snyder’s cows at the Maple Leaf site. Bulldozers could be seen at the site last week.
The Maple Leaf’s anticipated grand opening date is the summer of 2019.
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What: Maple Leaf Performing Arts Center groundbreaking. The public is invited to bring their own shovels to participate in the groundbreaking of the 2,000-seat, government-owned music venue.
When: 10 a.m. Tuesday, July 10
Where: The Maple Leaf construction site, on Snyder Farm behind Brown County Health & Living. Parking will be available at the Brown County YMCA, near the end of Hawthorne Drive on Willow Street.
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