Flynn plans to replace old, noisy seats as part of makeover

Posted on November 03, 2011

by Brent Hallenbeck

This article appeared in yesterday's Burlington Free Press

The Flynn Center for the Performing Arts is only 30 years old, but the 1,453 seats inside the theater date back to 1946, a vestige of the building’s days as a movie house. So while the theater maintains its art-deco sheen, the chairs patrons sit in have seen better days.“The seats are 60 years old,” said Fred “Chico” Lager, a Flynn Center board member. “I’ve been telling people they’re almost like me — I’m not 60, but they’re worn and they squeak.”

The noise created by World War II-era chairs is rarely considered a valuable contribution to the performing arts, so Lager is trying to de-squeak the Flynn. The former chief executive officer of Ben & Jerry’s is co-chairman of a committee overseeing a fundraising project that would replace those chairs as part of a larger effort to make more than $1 million in improvements to the Flynn.

The renovations began this summer, when the Main Street institution spent $359,000 to refurbish its loading dock around the corner on lower Church Street. The seat project is included in a plan that would also improve acoustics and add lighting to play up the art-deco features in the lobby and on the facade of the 81-year-old building.

The project addresses one key question, according to John Killacky, the Flynn Center’s executive director: “How do we bring this theater into the future and keep it the jewel that it is?” He hopes the fundraising will go well enough this fall to complete the project next summer, between the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival in early June and the typical start of the Flynn’s season in late September. Otherwise, Killacky said, the project could take place in 2013.

He said fundraising is going well, with much of the necessary $1.5 million already in hand. The Kresge Foundation contributed a $500,000 grant, the Flynn’s preservation fee included in ticket prices has raised $150,000 and people and businesses have donated more than $275,000.

“We’re halfway there, which is really lovely,” Killacky said. “To be halfway there is pretty spectacular, so I’m pretty grateful.”

The project would increase the Flynn’s wheelchair-accessible stations from six to 16, according to Killacky, and that reconfiguration means the number of permanent seats would be reduced by 28 to 1,425. The seats will be more streamlined, however, which Killacky said should improve legroom and sight lines within the theater. Plans also call for replacing the black-foam acoustic panels dangling from the balcony with something “more current” that will improve the sound within the theater, according to Killacky.

The architectural lighting should bring the subtle art-deco touches in the lobby and on the front of the building to the attention of patrons who might not otherwise notice them. “When you rush into the theater you don’t actually see them,” Killacky said while standing in the lobby Friday afternoon, as saxophone player Ravi Coltrane and his quartet ran through their sound check in the theater before that night’s concert. “I think it will add drama.”

Though he said he has been “heartened” by the fundraising campaign so far, Killacky acknowledges it’s not easy to ask for money in a sluggish economy when other nonprofits in the area, including the Shelburne Museum and its recently announced $14 million project, have embarked on fundraising efforts. Lager, the co-chairman of the chair-replacement campaign, noted that there’s never a good time to launch a capital campaign.

“It’s just the right time for the Flynn to do this work,” he said.

The Flynn not only hosts its own programming, it’s home to productions by Lyric Theatre, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, Vermont Stage and outside promoters including Higher Ground. “It’s really the cultural centerpiece of Burlington,” according to Lager, who said restaurants, bars and stores depend on the venue to attract customers. “The Flynn has really become part of the economic engine of downtown Burlington.”

Brian McCarthy of Colchester and his girlfriend, Linda Little, attended Friday’s concert featuring Coltrane, son of the late jazz legend John Coltrane. McCarthy is a saxophone player himself who has performed on the Flynn Center stage with the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival Big Band. He knows, however, not everything about the Flynn has to do with the performers.

“Who are the majority of people coming in? The audience members,” he said as he waited in the lobby before Coltrane’s show. “You need to keep them happy.”

McCarthy said he’s more concerned with the quality of the shows “than how my butt feels” in the seats, but he also knows that if audience members are uncomfortable they’ll form a negative opinion about the venue and, perhaps subliminally, about the performers. “At some point,” he said of the Flynn, “they need to keep it looking nice.”

Killacky said those audience members are in the forefront of his mind as the Flynn launches into the project. The Flynn welcomes 200,000 patrons every year, he said, and more than 20 percent of those are children attending student matinees who tend to put more wear and tear on the seats than do adult visitors. “Imagine having a couch for 60 years,” he said.

Because the seats lasted more than 60 years, Killacky said he wants to make sure the new seats treat their patrons at least as well for the next six decades.

“I think it has always been the people’s theater,” he said.