Thalia Mara Hall to be closed at least until mid-September, city official says

Mike Williams, deputy director of Human and Cultural Services, said he would like to complete remediation efforts at the facility by mid-September.

“But again, I can’t confidently speak to that because so much of it is dependent upon what is in the report that we received from the remediation company, and they just did the walk-through yesterday,” he said.

Meanwhile, Williams provided a clearer picture of how the theater is funded.

“The main cost of our rental fee… is $1,500 but that’s a little misleading because there’s a number of additional costs that are associated with that. We have, of course, the percentage that we get from the tickets. We have a construction fund – three percent that’s built into those ticket sales,” he said. “So, it’s really mostly dependent upon ticket sales, how much we generate from each show.”

“We’ve never made only $1,500 off anything.”

Last week, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba told reporters that the facility cost $1,200 to rent out, an amount that was “woefully insufficient.”

“When you have a fee that is that inexpensive, then when you have crews that are trying to maintain things, when you have the cost of cleanup, those things don’t become achieved because we’re charging such a woefully insufficient charge for those people to rent Thalia Mara,” he said.

“And these are events that are coming where they’re making hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the city is walking away with $1,200.”

Lumumba said similar-size theaters elsewhere charge significantly more, with some venues in New Orleans charging $40,000. Thalia Mara has approximately 2,000 seats.

According to Eventective.com, the Orpheum, a 2,300-seat auditorium in Memphis, rents for $2,500 to $10,000. The Saenger Theatre in Mobile, with 1,921 seats, carries a base price of between $3,000 and $4,000 per event, General Manager Kendall Wall said.

“These are things that we’re taking note of so that we find out how we can become more efficient,” Lumumba said.

Ward 1 Councilman Ashby Foote reiterated the mayor’s concerns during Tuesday’s budget talks.

“What I would encourage the department to do is review what other theaters, auditoriums are charging their programs for the use of their facility, and make sure we’re competitive, that we’re actually getting enough money, so that we don’t [have] half-baked facilities,” he said.

Williams said he was “100-percent aligned” with Foote’s thoughts, telling him Human and Cultural Services began looking into the matter about six months ago. He said that the study had to be put on hold to address issues at the building, but has since picked up again.

“We have to make sure we have a good building [and] offer everybody something that’s safe,” he added.

Talks about Thalia Mara have been ongoing for weeks, since the city announced the auditorium was temporarily shutting down on August 1 due to “early microbial activity.”

Officials attributed that growth to problems with the HVAC system, which had not been operating at full capacity for years.

“There are two chillers that run the HVAC system. They have been running at 25 percent capacity for probably the better of the last 10 years. Over the last year, even that capacity has declined,” Williams said.

Williams told the council that the city has “fast-tracked” the purchase of a new chiller, which will increase the system’s capacity to 75 percent.

“Hopefully it will be installed within the next two or three weeks,” he said. “When the procurement goes through for the next one, that’ll just basically spread the work over the two chillers when [we] have a full system.”

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