The basement shown left did not exist when Young People’s Theatre (now Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People) moved into a City-owned heritage building on Front Street East in 1977. Built in the 1870s, the property originally housed horses that pulled Toronto’s earliest streetcars; when electric power put the animals out to pasture the building was converted into a generating station. By the time YPT was invited to take over the space, the derelict building had stood empty for 30 years.
The basement was dug out and paid for by YPT, which, like several other local theatre companies, benefits from a long-standing City policy that provides below market rent (BMR) to qualifying not for profit arts groups. The City foregoes rent (in most cases the spaces are let for $2 per year) but the theatre company is responsible for upgrades and regular maintenance. It’s a win/win that in the case of Lorraine Kimsa Theatre provides theatrical and educational opportunities for as many as 80,000 youngsters each year, in addition to about 1,200 participants in year-round drama school.
“We were one of the first below market rent beneficiaries,” says LKTYP Artistic Director Allen MacInnis. “In fact, the City wouldn’t let us install permanent seats initially because they weren’t sure it was going to work. They wanted the space to be flexible in case they had to turn it into a community centre if the theatre didn’t fly. But within five years it was clear this was going to work and the city allowed us to pour concrete and install permanent seating.”
Heritage properties come with a range of restrictions that dictate what a commercial tenant or owner can and can’t do to a building, which discourages some developers from pursuing such properties. Letting arts organizations take on the renovation challenges allows the City to sidestep the capital improvement costs while preserving heritage and enhancing the cultural life of the city.
One of the challenges facing arts organizations with below market rent agreements is that capital funding from other levels of government can be problematic without long-term leases in place. For example, the Canada Cultural Spaces Fund available to professional arts and heritage organizations requires a minimum 10-year lease for any renovations, expansions or permanent installations of equipment. This week, Toronto City Council will vote on whether some exceptions can be made to the City standard BMR lease, which lasts for a term of five years. Having long-term security will allow tenants like LKTYP to further upgrade the City-owned buildings they occupy.
“There are lots of improvements we’d love to make to the building,” says LKTYP’s MacInnis. “For instance, look at our lighting board (below). I don’t know how old it is but a modern console would take up a fraction of the space this does and be much more efficient.”
MacInnis showed me around the theatre on Thursday and pointed out some of the challenges that come with working in a 130-year old building. The staff quarters are so tight people are practically sitting in each other’s laps. When I introduce myself as a writer for LiveWithCulture.ca someone jokes that at LKTYP they “live with claustrophobia.”
The office area is too small to house everyone so a few of the finance people are sequestered behind the venue’s secondary studio stage/rehearsal hall, one of them working up in a tiny crow’s nest in the eaves. “We’d rather give the space over to programming than comfy offices,” says MacInnis, below.
“Some critics think the City could be making money on these below market rent spaces but it would cost tens of millions of dollars to upgrade and retrofit these buildings for commercial tenants. Another thing to remember is that the people who work for theatres like ours subsidize the work with their own low wages. We earn nothing like what we’d make fundraising for a hospital or marketing a grocery chain. Our position is that BMR doesn’t help us so much as it helps the citizens of Toronto because the work we do either would not exist or it would be accessible to a very small percentage of the population because it would be so expensive to come.”
LKTYP is so committed to making its work accessible that in 2006 the company dropped its ticket prices by 40 per cent, which resulted in an immediate 24 per cent increase in ticket sales, according to MacInnis. “That confirmed for us that, yes, people want to come but it’s too costly. We said we’re going to tighten our belts and work with smaller budgets because we want to be thoroughly accessible to every child.”
Photos by Christopher Jones
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