With downtown development plans in the air, some push for downtown performing arts center

Along with a baseball stadium, another attraction might emerge on the northern downtown riverfront – a performing arts center.
Wilmington’s Alliance for a Regional Concert Hall (ARCH) has partnered with Phil Szostak, the main developer and architect of the Durham Per­forming Arts Center (DPAC). The DPAC lies next to the Durham Athletic Park, home of the Durham Bulls minor league baseball team. It is also part of the larger American Tobacco entertainment district, that features restaurants, public space and a YMCA.

Szostak has a similar vision for downtown Wilmington with a baseball stadium next door to a performing arts center.

“We think the projects can go together quite well,” he said. “We do have nights where we have 10,000 (people) at games and the theater with 2,800 seats is also going, it’s a quite lively downtown. I think Wilmington could have exactly the same thing.”

He has tried to tailor plans for a similar project in Wilmington that features a 2,400 seat performance hall that would be built for large musical and Broadway-type shows, performances that Thalian Hall could not handle. Szostak said a very similar problem existed in Durham as well with the Carolina Theater.

“Like in Durham, they had a 1,000 seat Carolina Theater which is owned by the city. A lot of the comments we got were, ‘Why are we doing a new theater when we can’t take care of the old one?’” he said. “The acts that would come to one and the other are very different.”

While raising money, Szostak said that the parties conferred to make sure no monies meant for the Carolina Theater were impacted.

Szostak emphasized that the DPAC was built with money from the city or county’s general fund, but financed with municipal bonds and private donations.

“There are ways that we’re looking at in Wilmington and the county that we would be able to look at sources of capital that would not dig into general funds,” Szostak said. The DPAC is now owned by the city of Durham and opened in 2008. Szostak estimates the cost of a Wilmington performance hall to be in the $45 million range, which he adds is cheaper than other projects around the country.

Riverfront Holdings II principals Steve Shuttleworth and Chuck Schoninger said they have met with the ARCH group, but are more concerned about offering an opportunity with more mass appeal and a cheaper night out.

“It hasn’t been our primary focus,” Shuttleworth said.

Though there are different audiences with some overlap, both have similar needs – such as traffic patterns and infrastructure.

“Since there was interest in both being developed, why not do it in a pattern with the public’s demand in use?” said Ruth Funk, spokeswoman for ARCH. “You have to think of traffic patterns, accommodations for a large mass of people. It makes sense to talk.”

Like Shuttleworth and Schoninger, Szostak knows Wilmington is at a crossroads for a project like this.

“If you look at Wilmington as it is today, you realize real quickly that it’s not going to stay that way,” Szostak said.

“That whole area north of the convention center is a pretty amazing opportunity that Wilmington will never have again.”