Five retired women living in Ashburn received a big Valentine when the County Administrator presented the proposed 2025 county budget to the Board of Supervisors (BOS) on February 14.
The women, neighbors in the over-55 community of The Regency at Ashburn formed Citizens for the Arts in Eastern Loudoun County with the express purpose of persuading local leaders to build a performance and visual arts center in eastern Loudoun. When the proposed 2025 County budget was released on Valentine’s Day, one of its new initiatives was “funding to begin preliminary design of an Eastern Loudoun Community Arts Center.”
“We hoped to see this in the budget, but had no idea it would be. If we had known, we’d have popped the cork on some Champagne!” said Betty O’Lear, one of the group’s organizers. She and neighbors Bobbie Christman, Patricia Hoffman, Renee Hogan, and Jean Trotter actually began discussing their desire to attend arts programs in the neighborhood in mid-2022, lamenting that there was no central place to go see Loudoun’s myriad arts groups perform. So, they created an organization name and a logo and set to work.
They reasoned that such a facility would need seating for at least 500 attendees, but not be too large because the cost to rent it might be prohibitive for small groups like StageCoach Theatre, Sterling Playmakers, and the Lyric Opera. “Equity, availability and accessibility” were their guiding principles, along with making sure a family of four can afford tickets.
Through family connections, Betty was familiar with the Reser Performance Center in Beaverton, Oregon, and recognized that facility as being the kind of facility Loudoun needs. The group also discovered that, closer to home, Reston, Virginia, had recently drafted its own design. We “borrowed like crazy,” from the many designs and centers we visited or learned about, Betty said, suggesting that to be useful to patrons as well as performers, the center should have practice rooms and arts rooms in addition to a performance hall.
The group first met with their own supervisor, Sylvia Glass (Broad Run District), who took the lead in sharing their ideas with the County Board of Supervisors. After sharing their interest at Supervisor meetings in the fall of 2022, Chair Randall then said, “Let’s talk,” so they developed a PowerPoint outlining their concept and shared it with other supervisors. Finally, in April 2023, the Finance Committee voted to put the concept into the Capital Improvement Program (CIP)—unfunded. The county then followed up with a feasibility study in late 2023.
Not knowing the results of the feasibility study, a few dozen representatives of local arts groups got together in early February of this year to discuss how they could all lend their support to the effort. All shared their difficulties in finding and affording venues that showcased their talents.
Such a plan might take years to come to fruition, but for now, says Betty, “Finally we all have hope." And, they're not alone.
The Town of Leesburg also is considering a proposal to build a performing arts center downtown on the 2-acre municipal parking lot on Liberty St. Leesburg attorney Peter Burnett, who has no financial stake in the project, facilitated the submission of the only proposal for a public-private partnership (PPP) to develop the property in response to a town request for such proposals a couple of years ago. He is generally acknowledged as the leader of the private members of the group which includes Waukeshaw Development Inc., Bowman Consulting, James G. Davis Construction, and DBI Architects Inc.
With its FY 2024 budget, the Leesburg Town Council appropriated $30,000 in funding for a “Liberty Lot Redevelopment Workgroup” to study development options. So far, the Town has spent $9,712.50 on a detailed “Size and Use Analysis” report, and $10,000 on a “Fiscal Impact Analysis.”
Separate from the Workgroup’s study budget, and because the site is a former dump, the Council allocated $164,000 to fund an environmental remediation study to see what it might cost to remove the existing landfill material. The preliminary estimate to fully remediate the site ranges between $12 million and $17 million, which could be an economic non-starter, Peter says. But he said full site remediation might not be needed if the site were simply capped, and a 360-space parking garage built on top. The performing arts center could be immediately next door on the corner of Wirt and South Streets and the town would benefit from both weeknight and weekend parking access for the Performing Arts and Conference Center and provide added downtown business parking during normal business hours at the town’s usual parking rates.
Originally, the proposal included not only a performing arts center but also a restaurant and 65 units of affordable senior housing on the space, but further investigation concluded that they would be unable to tap Virginia bond financing to help construct the senior housing on the Liberty Lot itself because of the lot’s landfill history. Instead, a boutique hotel with a restaurant is being considered on additional land to the east of the performing arts center site. It would be built by developer Don Knutson, of the Knutson Companies. Additional adjacent locations for the attainable housing are being explored. Both a performance center consultant hired by the group and Visit Loudoun says there would be significant benefits from a nearby hotel, both for the performing arts center and to house users of its alternative use conference center.
Detailed cost estimates for construction of the various elements of the project haven’t been conducted, but broad estimates put public funding at around $30 million to build a 40,000 square foot 500-seat performance art and event space, and between $12 million and $16 million to build the parking garage.
The full Workgroup includes Peter, a partner in Burnett & Williams, familiar to our readers for spearheading The Ampersand Project during the pandemic; Al Hansen, President of DBI Architects; Don Knutson, the hotel developer and an active member of the Loudoun County Housing Advisory Board; and Kim Hart, a general partner in the for-profit Good Works LP. Kim, a Loudoun Laurels recipient for his work in developing more than 700 affordable rental units for Loudoun County, also has served on the Loudoun County Housing Advisory Board and is advocating for the senior housing piece of the project.
Rounding out the group are Vice Mayor Neil Steinberg and Councilman Ara Bagdasarian. Ara has served as president of the Loudoun Symphony Orchestra and co-founded BENEFIT, an organization of local musicians who annually organize Leesburg’s Crossroads Music Festival to help fund local non-profits. They’re supported by Town staff Keith Markel, Deputy Town Manager; Russell Seymour, Director of Economic Development; and James David, Director of Community Development Council.
Asked whether he would consider a county-funded facility to be competitive with the Town plan, Peter said, “Absolutely not! The thing about theatres is that they tend to attract business for each other much like restaurant districts in many communities.” Obviously, the County would be welcome to help fund the project, Peter added, but all the local performing arts groups complain of such a paucity of performance space that there is plenty of demand to go around.
The difficulty in parsing such a center's usage comes when considering what kinds of entertainment tend to be the most lucrative, balanced with the extent to which the community wishes to support local arts groups. Louise Stevens, an arts center management consultant to the group, estimates that, of 120-140 available performing nights per year, as many as 80 of those days would need to attract nationally-recognized acts for the facility to be profitable. Managed with an eye to the highest potential revenue, she believes it would create up to 175 jobs and bring millions in spending to the community.
As an investment, RCL Consulting Group said they thought it would add between $400,000 and $500,000 annually in tax dollars to the town coffers. “Interestingly, it would cost between $200,000 and $400,000 per year to have the facility managed, so it looks to have break-even operational potential right out of the box,” Peter says, but he allows that there are other considerations like support for local performers that need to be taken into consideration.
In his mind, the theatre would be owned by the Town which would have the ultimate responsibility for it. Beyond that, how it would be paid for is “still subject to a fair amount of thought and no single conclusion has yet been reached.” Some of the money might be raised by corporate donors and local arts patrons, for example.
Says Peter, “The downtown needs to have its own internal economic vigor and I think it has something to give our community that no other place in the county can: the historic district and its charm and its variety of architecture, eating venues and stores. All that just goes hand in hand with a performing arts center.”
“I think the whole package helps assure a successful, vigorous economy for downtown Leesburg for decades to come,” he adds.
The Town was holding an open hearing on the plan at our deadline.
