Successful Concert or Not?

I headed to a concert at the Keefe Auditorium at the Elm Street Middle School in Nashua early this evening and sat in the car waiting for the doors to open. Finding a parking place is iffy at best, and knowing that seems to push drivers over the deep end. Drivers pull "U-eys" in tight traffic, swoosh into the wrong lane to scoop someone on a parking spot, ignore fire lanes, snow drifts and "No Parking" signs to get close. Some attendees just give up and park at the shopping center 3 blocks away – a long walk on a cold New Hampshire night.

Patrons arrive at a tiny lobby which quickly fills since the auditorium doors remain closed until 30 minutes before the performance, so most people end up waiting outside. The auditorium, until recently, had no rails anywhere on the stairs up to the front door – a serious challenge for most senior citizens and a number of others. 

"The Yeas are right, we need a new Performing Arts facility." I thought, as I sat in the car waiting. "This is a hopeless, out of date building." I remembered the last concert I attended. Inside the auditorium, a fan continuously blows cold air,  so nearly everyone enjoyed the concert with their coats, and sometimes hats still on. A little of the ceiling paint is peeling. And the bathrooms are the ones that the kids use, few in number, far from the auditorium and low to the ground, to say the least.

But tonight, as I continued watching the pageant of crazy drivers and people arriving, I slowly realized that the block that the school sits on offers adequate space to build out a larger lobby, with room for restrooms – and maybe even a refreshments counter. The auditorium has minimal ornamentation inside, so perhaps electrical and audio upgrades would be pretty easy. There also would be space alongside the auditorium for a small parking garage, a facility that might be valuable to the community as well. The auditorium is at the end of the school building, so access to it for construction should not be a problem.
 
I wonder what the cost difference between a remodel and and new facility is. Tonight's concert was one in the Nashua Community Concerts series. The house was nearly, if not totally sold out – 1500 seats. The beauty of this program is that the series ticket (for 6 concerts) costs $50 ($15 for students). If you want a ticket to only one show, it costs $25.  Stroke of genius. So people buy season tickets, and holding the tickets, they go to the shows. This is their 79th season, which by anyone's definition would have to be called successful.  At some point, a new facility, (or an expensive remodel) would make this program unaffordable, and that surely would disappoint 1,500 patrons. Let's be careful what we wish for: maybe we don't have to give it to the Yeas just yet.