Grass root ideas wither in St. Louis political weather.

Judd, Dennis

The interminable fight over the Kiel Opera House seems strange and perverse. Perhaps better than any recent controversy, the struggle over whether to reopen Kiel - one of the most significant opera houses ever built in the United States - reveals one of the reasons St. Louis remains a leading example of urban failure.

St. Louis's civic elites have always circled the wagons when confronted with a challenge to their hegemony. Perhaps for this reason the city has rarely been in tune with the times. St. Louis long ago turned its back on the river as a centerpiece of renewal, making it one of the few waterfront cities in the country to do so. Now its civic leadership seems ready to kill any project that it cannot control.

Who runs St. Louis?

That's what the Kiel controversy is about.

Around the country

Even the most casual urban tourist of the 1990s cannot fail to notice the signs of downtown revival in cities from coast to coast. In the space of just three decades - and much less in some cities - bedraggled downtown streets inherited from a vanishing industrial era have given way to places to play. Since the mid-1970s, cities have renovated their waterfronts by razing abandoned docks and warehouses and replacing them with shopping, recreational and condominium facilities. They have engaged in a virtual arms race to build convention centers, festival malls and sports stadiums. They have planned and subsidized cultural, arts and entertainment districts. And they have built connective tissues of walkways and bikeways, vest-pocket parks and plazas, pedestrian malls and light-rail systems to knit together this new infrastructure into spaces capable of nurturing a vital urban culture and street life.

Obviously the construction of a space for urban culture does not guarantee that anything will happen in it. But cities have not been content to leave it to the marketplace to decide. Over the past decade they have promoted and invested heavily in performance in its many guises - the staging of festivals and parades, the return to the street of pushcarts, musicians, make-up artists, jugglers, acrobats and other accoutrements of street theater. The infrastructure for performance - museums, performance halls, restaurants and bars - all have begun to cluster together, and have been matched with a revival of local opera, theater companies and local musical talent. These and other elements of high and low culture define the essence and identity of cities in the 1990s. The storied past, when it still reverberates, does so because its architectural and character supply a setting for a newly constructed urban culture. Urban culture as a unique and sometimes exotic product has become an engine of local economic growth, as avidly consumed as cars, homes and the other material manifestations of middle-class life.

For better or worse, in the public imagination and in media images the absence of a vital culture and street life has become more important for defining a failing city in the 1990s than slums, poverty and crime. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, every one of the nation's 50 largest cities is providing support for the arts. From the biggest cities (New York) to the smallest (Riverhead, a hamlet outside New York) from the most blighted (Detroit and Newark) to the already prosperous (Denver and San Francisco), culture has become the nation's leading-edge formula for urban revival.

Almost but ...

In the early 1990s, it seemed possible that St. Louis might become a leading player in this national revitalization movement. On Aug. 29, 1991, The New York Times highlighted St. Louis's old theater district at Grand Center and called it "a new Lincoln Center." With the St. Louis Symphony at Powell Hall; concerts at the Sheldon; musicals, plays and national touring events at the Fox; and with local theater at the Grandel Theatre, Grand Center seemed poised to become a fully-fledged arts district. It has never quite happened - although the individual venues are busy, the critical mass of restaurants, lounges and the other businesses necessary to sustain an active street life never arrived.

Grand Center remained separated from a downtown that continued to languish. Reopening the Kiel for operas and other performances would seem to be a no-brainer. It is close enough to the Grand Center to create synergy with it. It could even anchor an enlarged arts district, helping to link Grand Center to the downtown. The Edison Warehouse, located close to the Kiel, will soon be renovated into condominiums, a hotel, restaurants and shops. Developers have shown a lot of interest in the Washington Avenue loft district. The idea that the opera house could become a centerpiece of a growing interest in downtown has not made its renovation a sure thing, however. Far from it. It has become a battleground.

A bad deal for the city

The St. Louis Municipal Auditorium, later named the Kiel Opera House and Auditorium, opened on April 14, 1934. It was a much-heralded, state-of-the art building, constructed in the midst of the Great Depression, at a time when city after city invested in all-purpose municipal auditoriums capable of handling conventions, trade shows and large performances. The opera house, where the St. Louis Symphony played from 1934 to 1968, has more than 3,500 seats and is flanked on each side by four smaller theaters of about 700 seats each. A maze of offices, prop rooms and dressing rooms runs beneath the opera house, along with a space - the Kiel Club - for receptions and dining. Though the spaces around the opera house continued to be used, the opera house held its last event in 1990. Used for decades for conventions and exhibitions, rock concerts, wrestling matches and graduation ceremonies, the auditorium was replaced in 1994 by the Kiel Center, built at a cost of $170 million, as a home for the St. Louis Blues. Basically as an afterthought the St. Louis University Billikens were also given space in the center, in exchange for a rental fee.

The Kiel Center Partners, Inc., was originally organized by 22 members of Civic Progress to build a house for the Blues (the group has since renamed itself Clark Enterprises, and currently has 20 members). The partners succeeded in cutting themselves a sweet deal with the city for the rights to build and manage the Kiel Center (the agreement was actually signed by the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission and the city's Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority). Although the St. Louis Board of Aldermen was apparently ignorant of many of its key provisions when the deal was signed in 1994, the agreement placed limits on the city's ability to market the new convention center and stadium, reserving for the Kiel first dibs on all sporting events requiring at least 21,000 seats and conventions requiring less than 60,000 square feet.

The city also committed itself to making $35 million in capital improvements for site preparation and construction of a parking garage.

Finally, and ultimately of great consequence, the city handed over to the Kiel partners exclusive control over the use and future plans for redevelopment of the Kiel arena. Whoever represented the city at this poker table folded without even looking at the cards.

As little more than a symbolic gesture (or, more accurately, as an afterthought), the Kiel partners agreed to spend up to $2.5 million to "repair" the opera house. For several years the controversy over the Kiel has focused mainly on allegations that the Kiel partners have reneged on their promise. Since 1994, the Riverfront Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch have repeatedly castigated the Kiel partners and Civic Progress over the issue. The pressure for reopening the Kiel seems to be building. In January 1996, the board of aldermen passed a resolution asking Comptroller Darlene Green to pursue action to reopen the opera house. Later the same year, in October, the board passed another resolution, this time asking Green to report on her progress. Green has consistently made comments supporting the idea of reopening the Kiel, but seems to have taken different positions about what should go into it. Lately, it is said, she has been favoring the idea of a satellite museum of the Smithsonian, though at other times she has said she also is considering restoring it for performances.

Last year, St. Louis Clarence Mayor Harmon suggested that the city would explore the possibility of legal action against the partners, but since then little has been heard about it. There is good reason for the mayor to proceed cautiously. Though a lawyer hired by the Post expressed the view that the language of the Kiel Center agreement obligates the partners to fully renovate the Kiel, in fact, in 1994, the Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority signed a certificate of completion, which might carry considerable weight in a court of law. Thus, despite the apparent support for the opera house, it remains shuttered, perhaps a typical case of St. Louis political gridlock.

Ed Golterman's proposal

Last August, Ed Golterman stepped into the breach, claiming that he could save everybody a lot of trouble if the city would allow his Kiel Performing Arts, Inc. to assume the opera house lease. He could, he said, make the opera house into a money-making venture that would cost the city not one dime.

Golterman estimates that a full renovation would cost about $20 million, with possibly $12 million more needed if it is necessary to make the structure earthquake-proof. A bond issue of $50 million would cover both the costs of renovation and the first years of start-up. He has even promised to give the city 20 percent of the annual operating income for the first five years. For a change, the city would actually be making, rather than paying, money for a new project.

According to Golterman, the economic spin-offs would be sizable as well. He estimates that $12 million in union crafts salaries would be generated over the 18-month construction period. After it opened, the opera house and other venues would employ upwards of 200 people and it would bring thousands of people into downtown each year.

Energized by his vision of what the opera house could do for St. Louis, Golterman became a one-man band, calling politicians and people in the arts community and asking (or, some say, demanding) support. His zealous approach flagrantly violated a well-established code of conduct in St. Louis. Rather than going hat-in-hand to Civic Progress, he organized a citizens' group and sponsored a street demonstration downtown.

About 40 people attended on a sunny Sunday afternoon - hardly an auspicious beginning. He started showing up for various functions wearing a sandwich board festooned with photographs of the historic era opera house and of events once held there. On Halloween, he won a prize for his costume at the annual Headache Ball. Some people regarded him as a somewhat comic figure, well-meaning but single-minded, even obsessed, about his cause.

But he hasn't gone away. Indeed, he seems to be gaining momentum and picking up support week by week. On Dec. 8, a group of both local backers and out-of-town supporters recruited by Golterman toured the opera house. Letters to the editor of the Post have come in a steady stream, and the Post has covered his proposals in detail and sympathetically.

On Dec. 30, Windows on Washington held a "Re-Open the Kiel Opera House" fundraiser, sponsored by St. Louis CORE and Intermission magazine. An impressive line-up of musical performers entertained a packed room, and Golterman showed his own considerable singing talent. Golterman's crusade began to look very much like a citizens' movement instead of a one-man band.

Some of the people attending the Windows on Washington event carried genuine credentials as arts entrepreneurs, giving muscle to what might otherwise have appeared to be a mere social occasion. The occasion demonstrated that there was substance to Golterman's claim that his proposal was serious and substantial. He has lined up Palm Capital of Boca Raton, Fla., to market an estimated $50 million in bonds, if the city will agree to approve a tax-free municipal bond issue.

Ray Shepardson, who has renovated several theaters (including the much-publicized Alan Theatre in Cleveland) and who was the first general manager of St. Louis's Fox Theatre, has agreed to manage the renovation and get the opera house up and running. John Kinnamon, producer and owner of the Burn Brae Dinner Theatre in Burtonsville, Md., and who Golterman claims is the biggest producer of dinner theater in the country, has agreed to use some of the space in the Kiel for dinner theater, make the Kiel Club into a lounge and help book productions. Tom Kline, owner of Windows on Washington, says he plans to open a Windows on Kiel. Steve Schankman, co-president of Contemporary Productions, has offered to book productions into the Kiel (it is interesting that Shepardson and Schankman proposed to reopen the opera house several years ago, but the idea was vetoed by the Kiel partners). Golterman also talks of putting in children's theater, a jazz and blues museum and of providing space for cultural educational programs and exhibits.

Who is Ed Golterman?

Are Golterman's plans practical, or are they merely a mirage billowing up from the fantasies of a man driven to live up to a family opera tradition? In a profile distributed by Golterman, he describes his grandfather, Guy Golterman, as "the father of Grand Opera in St. Louis from 1910 to 1940." The blurb goes on to say that between 1910 and 1917, Guy Golterman brought a series of major opera performances to St. Louis, with performances by the greats - Caruso, Farrar, Tetrazzini, Ruffo, Campanini, and more. In 1917, Golterman and the Grand Opera committee inaugurated the new outdoor municipal theater (the Muny) in Forest Park with a week-long performance of "Aida," and Pagliacci came later the same summer. After a few years away from the city, he returned and organized three seasons of opera at the Muny in 1924, 1925 and 1926, again with a line-up of international stars. His production of "Aida" dedicated the Kiel Opera House in 1934. Through his St. Louis Grand Opera Company, he produced major opera all through the 1930s, productions featuring the greatest stars of the time - Lily Pons, Giovanni Martinelli, Maria Jeritza, Kirsten Flagstad among them.

Ed Golterman's mother was a grand opera singer, continuing her career after marriage by appearing with the St. Louis Light Opera Guild in the 1940s and getting parts with opera companies touring through St. Louis. Golterman says the first thing he remembers as a child is opera - and the St. Louis sports scene: "I grew up enmeshed in those worlds."

He attended St. Louis University High School and sang for years in the St. Louis Cathedral Choir. "All I remember is music at home, music at the Kiel." Though it is not the source of his livelihood, Golterman's love affair with music is still very apparent. In his bio statement he refers to himself as a concert and show baritone. He sang the national anthem for the Blues for 16 seasons, and continues to sing it on various occasions.

Some who encounter Golterman could be excused for thinking that he is a zealot when it comes to the opera house. This would be hard to dispute. He has, after all, taken 11 months off from his professional life and business so that he can devote himself fully to the cause. He has spent eight years in radio and television as a newscaster, sportscaster, reporter and writer/producer, but for the last 25 years he has written and produced training films and videos on worker safety, hazardous materials, emergency response, and on AIDS education in the schools. His corporate clients have included Monsanto; Solutia, Inc. (a spin-off of Monsanto); Shell Oil Company; Anheuser-Busch, and the Missouri Lutheran Synod. To put a hold on all this to reopen the opera house - does this make him a nut, or a dedicated public servant working without pay?

Can Golterman's proposal work?

Critics say that Golterman's proposals, or for that matter, any proposals for reopening the opera house, are economically unrealistic. Last July, a consultant working for the Urban Land Institute. (which was, in turn, hired by Downtown Now) issued a report recommending that the opera house not be reopened as a performing arts venue. The ULI said that a reopened opera house would compete with the Fox Theatre and with a $50-million performing arts center being planned on the UMSL campus. It recommended instead that the Kiel be turned into a museum. Later, some civic leaders proposed that the Kiel be torn down and turned into a parking garage (for the chief benefit, no doubt, of the Kiel Center).

More recently, on Dec. 10, St. Louis 2004 released a report (the St. Louis Cultural Assessment Study) admitting that the reaction to the ULI study had been controversial, but then going on to say that "the Kiel is too large" in its present configuration. The study stated that 18 performing arts facilities of various sizes were being planned in the St. Louis area, leading to the conclusion that there would not be enough demand for a renovated opera house. On Jan. 19, Mark Sauer, the president of the Kiel Center and the St. Louis Blues, when asked by a Post reporter about Golterman's plans, was quoted as saying, "There's not a molecule of substance in it."

The politics

Whether it is financially feasible to reopen the opera house would seem to be an empirical question. Obviously the answer is relevant. A plausible argument can be made that the capital costs and debt service would be too high, that operating costs would be excessive and that demand would be insufficient, especially considering the competition from the Fox and other venues. Especially with the weight of so much authority behind them, it is hard to rebut such assertions. Skeptics within the arts community ought not to be dismissed lightly; they do, after all, speak from hard experience. They know how hard it is to make any venue turn a profit, how difficult it is to schedule a steady flow of performances and how long it often takes to attract audiences to a new location. According to an arts administrator, the 470-seat Grandel Theatre, opened in 1992, took five years to build up a full schedule, and it still operates at a loss of about $100,000 per year.

Palm Capital, the Boca Raton firm that says it will market bonds to finance the renovation of the Kiel, has not actually conducted the research yet to show that the opera house can operate as a successful commercial venture. Evan Schwartzfarb, Palm Capital's president, says that he is confident that the numbers will add up at the end of the day. He points out that the multiple venues supporting the opera house make it an unusual structure, one that can support a variety of mutually supporting activities. Every new use in the building, he points out, will require very little added capital. When previous studies are mentioned, he points out that none of those studies has been based upon any actual economic analysis. They talk about population shifts and the number of performing arts venues in the St. Louis area, the perceptions of civic and political elites and members of the arts community - but do not present data on the probable uses of the Kiel and an estimated demand for those uses, or the revenues and costs of particular uses. He says that that's the kind of analysis that Palm Capital would do before trying to market bonds to investors. The bottom line remains: No one can be sure whether the Kiel Opera House can be made into a successful commercial venture.

Turf battles

As shown so amply by recent events, St. Louis's civic elites have not been notoriously conservative about fiscal matters, at least when the public purse is involved. It made sure the Kiel Center would work even if that meant taking business away from the stadium and the convention center, and even if it meant the Arena could never be reopened. Perhaps it would be superfluous, in this context, to mention the prodigious amount of public money involved in persuading the Rams to move to St. Louis. If Civic Progress wanted to reopen the opera house, it would not be deterred by arguments about such mundane matters as whether the facility would pay for itself. It would, if it wished, arrange the finances and, if necessary, persuade the city to provide subsidies. Its opposition to reopening the Kiel is not related, mainly, to fiscal concerns, but to turf.

From the very beginning and long before Ed Golterman showed up, the Kiel partners evinced an obvious indifference and/or hostility to the opera house. When they reached their agreement with the city to build the Kiel Center, the opera house was an afterthought worthy of just a few lines in a long document. After the agreement was reached, indifference seemed to turn to hostility. Golterman says he was told that the roof of the opera house was left open to the weather for 15 months during the Center's construction, and that 40 dressing rooms were demolished. The reason for the Kiel partners' attitude is not difficult to fathom. Representing their views, perhaps, the ULI's consultant concluded that night-time events at the opera house would compete with uses of the Kiel Center, making access and parking a significant problem. That was a principal reason the ULI report recommended that a museum, with day-time uses, be put into the building.

Other players in this controversy are motivated by their own turf concerns. On many occasions Leon Strauss, president of Fox Associates, has said if the opera house opens, he will close the Fox. The fear of competition has also colored the views of arts administrators and others connected to the Grand Center. Grand Center has attracted $100 million in investment over the past decade or so, but it has still not been able to create a critical mass of activities sufficient to sustain a vibrant street life. Even after several years the Grand Center has not exactly transmogrified into a busy arts district. People drive to Powell Hall, the Fox, the Grandel, or the Sheldon, park their cars and attend an event, and then go home or somewhere outside the district for a nightcap. Grand Center has become not so much an arts district as a collection of arts venues. This gives people identified with it all the more reason to be concerned about competition from outside the district (though, curiously, UMSL's facility seems to be exempted from this concern).

The desire to protect turf is driving most of the opposition to Golterman's plan to reopen the opera house. But the most significant turf battle is not over money or the spatial location of performing arts. It is over political power.

The truly important question involving the Kiel is: Who runs St. Louis? St. Louis's civic elite does not intend to allow an interloper - sponsoring demonstrations, fundraisers, and wearing a sandwich board, for God's sake - to come into this town and challenge their authority to make the big decisions downtown.

It ought to be said that if eccentricity disqualified anyone from participating in the civic life of St. Louis, there would scarcely be a soul left to attend the charity balls or become eligible for the annual Citizen-of-the-Year awards. Anyway, a healthy dose of eccentricity, especially if laced with a bit of tongue-in-cheek self-deprecation, would open up the city's politics to let some new light shine in. Remember the famous poster, a view from behind of a man holding his raincoat open to a statue, with the caption, "Open Yourself to Art" That was Neil Goldschmidt, then the mayor of Portland, Ore. St. Louis is starved for just this kind of irreverence, and it surely won't come from Civic Progress.

If Ed Golterman succeeds, he will not help revive urban culture in St. Louis and help revitalize a sagging downtown, but he may take accomplish something equally important and enduring; he may be show how a tired and anachronistic civic elite can be challenged. It would be refreshing if a citizens' movement were to succeed in challenging St. Louis's power structure. This would be the first time in memory that a major project has been undertaken in downtown despite opposition from Civic Progress. A reopened Kiel Opera House would be a major event signaling that St. Louis intends to join the rest of the nation's cities in using culture to revive downtown. Perhaps of more enduring value. However, reopening the Kiel might revitalize the politics of the city. St. Louis is overdue for a changing of the guard.

Dennis Judd is professor of political science at University of Missouri St. Louis.