PERFORMING ARTS CENTERS: DOES UPTOWN CULTURE STIMULATE DOWNTOWN VITALITY? Jane Chu Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Philanthropic Studies, Indiana University December 2012 Accepted by the Faculty of Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Patricia A. Wittberg, Ph.D., Chairperson Doctoral Committee Wolfgang H. Bielefeld, Ph.D. Michael Rushton, Ph.D. September 12, 2012 Todd Saxton, Ph.D. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation represents a synthesis of perspectives on urban sociology, downtown revitalization, the experience economy, organizational sociology, the nonprofit performing arts, and philanthropic studies. I want to thank the members of my dissertation committee for their insights, which helped me to assemble and incorporate their diverse perspectives into a single research project. My appreciation goes to my advisor, Patricia Wittberg, for her dedication and commitment to guiding me through this learning process. Finally, I am grateful to the Board of Directors of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City for giving me the opportunity to serve in my professional capacity, thus allowing me to live and breathe my research in real time. iii ABSTRACT Jane Chu PERFORMING ARTS CENTERS: DOES UPTOWN CULTURE STIMULATE DOWNTOWN VITALITY? Performing arts centers have been touted as a strategy for revitalizing downtowns by increasing activities that bring in residents with higher incomes, tourists, arts employees, educated workers, and housing. Despite their popularity, civic leaders have encountered complexity in these projects, from financial challenges, to delayed openings and operating deficits. Previous downtown studies examine public facilities, such as stadiums and cultural institutions, through essays, surveys, case studies, or by quantifying transactions exchanged between the public and the facility. This dissertation focuses solely on performing arts centers , excluding all other forms of public facilities and cultural venues, by examining self-collected data on literature-based characteristics of 218 downtowns with and without performing arts centers, and on the health of 129 additional performing arts centers, all over a seven-year period of time. It was hypothesized that the presence of a performing arts center would contribute to increases in the values of all downtown revitalization characteristics, and community characteristics, as well as organizational attributes of the performing arts center itself (age, size, and revenue types) would in turn, increase the values of the overall health of the performing arts center. Through the use of multiple linear regressions, this research shows that performing arts centers can play a role in revitalizing downtowns. This research also shows that a single characteristic is not solely responsible for revitalizing downtowns; rather, the increased vitality results from a confluence of the characteristics. iv Endogeneity tests show that a performing arts center is less likely to enter a deserted downtown bereft of vitality. Instead, performing arts centers serve as harbingers of revitalization, confirming the presence of downtown vitality, before they proceed to activate vitality further. Finally, through the use of binary logistic regressions, community characteristics are identified in order to determine the conditions of downtowns that would be most equipped to open a performing arts center, as compared with downtowns that could not. Patricia A. Wittberg, Ph.D., Chairperson v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables .................................................................................................................... vii List of Figures ......................................................................................................................x Chapter One Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 Chapter Two Literature Review...................................................................................................15 Chapter Three Methodology of the current study ..........................................................................62 Chapter Four Analysis..................................................................................................................82 Chapter Five Discussion ..............................................................................................................90 Chapter Six Conclusions and Implications ..............................................................................113 Appendices Appendix A – Downtown Revitalization .............................................................121 Appendix B – Overall PAC Health ......................................................................151 Appendix C – Downtown and performing arts centers studied ...........................158 Appendix D – Literature Review Summary Table ..............................................165 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................177 Curriculum Vitae vi LIST OF TABLES Table A. Downtown Revitalization variables ...................................................................72 Table B. Overall PAC Health Variables ...........................................................................81 Table C. Downtown Revitalization Regressions ..............................................................83 Table Da. Downtown Revitalization Compare means – actual values in 2000 and 2007........................................................................................................................87 Table Db. Downtown Revitalization Compare means – percentage change 2000-2007 ..............................................................................................................87 Table E. Overall PAC Health Regression .........................................................................89 Appendix A – Downtown Revitalization Table 1. Descriptive statistics of independent and dependent variables for downtown revitalization.............................................................................................121 Table 2a. Correlations with 2000 variables .....................................................................125 Table 2b. Correlations of the dependent variables ...........................................................126 Table 3. Multicollinearity tests .......................................................................................130 Table 4a. Compare Means actual values in 1990, 2000, and 2007 ..................................132 Table 4b. Compare Means percentage change between 1990-2000, 2000-2007, and 1990-2007 ...........................................................................................................134 Table 5. Independent Samples t-tests..............................................................................137 Table 6. Compare Means of coastal vs. non-coastal downtowns ...................................139 Table 7. Stepwise Regressions of the Downtown Revitalization Variables, adding PAC/No PAC on the second step...............................................................................140 vii Table 8. Correlations of independent and dependent variables in downtowns with a new PAC vs. downtowns with a historic PAC ...............................................142 Table 9. Compare Means of Downtowns with a new PAC vs. Downtowns with a historic PAC in percent change of growth over time ....................................................143 Table 10. Correlations with downtown square miles in downtowns with vs. without a PAC .........................................................................................................................144 Table 11. Correlations with the number of arts organizations in downtowns with vs. without a PAC ..............................................................................................145 Table 12. Binary Logistic Regression Results for PAC Readiness .................................146 Table 13. Binary Logistic Regression Results for Historic PAC downtowns vs. new PAC downtowns ...........................................................................................148 Table 14. Means and medians of characteristics in downtowns with a PAC ..................149 Appendix B – Overall PAC Health Table 15. Descriptive statistics ........................................................................................151 Table 16. Correlations with 2000 variables .....................................................................153 Table 17. Multicollinearity ..............................................................................................155 Table 18. Regression comparisons ..................................................................................157 Appendix C – Downtowns and performing arts centers studied Table 19. Downtowns with PACs that opened 2000-2006 ..............................................158 Table 20. Downtowns without a PAC between 2000-2007 .............................................161 Table 21. PACs that opened before 2000 ........................................................................162 viii Appendix D – Literature Review Summary Table Table 22. Downtown Revitalization