EDITORIAL – Mamma Mia! proves what a success a PAC could have been
Mamma Mia! poster. (Western Canada Theatre)
An ArmchairMayor.ca editorial by Mel Rothenburger.
IT’S A REALLY big show, this Mamma Mia! musical running at the Sagebrush Theatre for the next couple of weeks. At Saturday’s official opening night, a full-house audience laughed, sang and clapped along with the cast for two hours of great entertainment.
Mamma Mia!, of course, is based on the music of Abba (or ABBA, if you prefer), the Swedish pop band famous for corny lyrics and upbeat melodies during the 970s and 1980s. While snobbish critics put them down, they were a phenomenal commercial success.
Songs like Dancing Queen, Honey Honey, Waterloo, Money Money Money and, of course, Mamma Mia! itself and so many more rode high on the charts for years.
The musical version of Mamma Mia! has been an international smash hit for at least a decade and a half, and the Western Canada Theatre production — with a professional cast hailing from eastern Canada — does it proud.
A theatre of 1,500 seats would be every bit as full as the 700-plus seat Sagebrush, and, in a way, it’s a shame, because Kamloops is lacking the kind of venue that would do such productions justice.
A year and a half ago the city was struggling with a proposal to build a new performing arts centre downtown at the site of the Kamloops Daily News building. Part of the plan was a 1,500-seat theatre and a smaller “black box” theatre as well, plus all the other facilities that go with a first-rank performing arts theatre.
But not everyone could see the vision. They worried about cost, and campaigned against it by saying such a centre would seldom be filled and would cater mostly to the elite. Well, take a look at Mamma Mia! Anyone of any stripe can get joy out of this production, and think of how much richer it would be playing in a dedicated PAC instead of a high-school auditorium. It’s proof of what a PAC could have been.
But Kamloops said no. What a mistake it was.
Got an opinion? Leave a comment here or email mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
How soon people forget.
It was proven that the PAC would be a continuous revenue generator for the city itself as well as for downtown business, and its daily operating costs were covered by that revenue. Thats a far cry from the soccer fields etc etc etc that cost the city maintenance money. As well, the PAC would have been used far more days per year than any field or rink (at about 250 days/year), so the ‘unused’ argument has no bones.
Do this (in my opinion), sell the empty Daily News building to BCLC for them to build on and move to, and put a PAC/parking/new city hall on the existing BCLC site. Lets end this void in Kamloops, even little Vernon has a better performance stage than us.
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I would be more inclined to pay for a PAC if our fabulous city council and bureaucrats could manage a budget without hiking our taxes 2.5 – 3.5% each year. Let alone the boost they already got from skyrocketing house prices. Until they get their act together and learn to budget properly, I don’t trust any proposal that would burden us more than we already are.
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I’d still like to see BCLC take over the property, build a beautiful building with loads of monthly pay-parking below ground (with a time limited tax credit for the “public service” it would be providing) and then see city hall’s ever expanding bureaubots relocate to the old BCLC digs next door to city hall.
Sadly, as it seems a rational idea, it is unlikely to gain any traction.
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Every time I drive by that big dark building on the corner of Fourth and Seymour I think about how brilliant our city’s downtown could have been. I still hope.
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Today is pension day. Consider the poor who are on pension and fixed incomes. The priorities are food, shelter and clothing. The PAC is a luxury and it would have been a burden on the public for years to come.
If it was such a good idea, a private investor or a group of private investors would have taken the bull by the horns and run with it.
The Blue Jays baseball team is a pretty good example of a good investment; a good product, good marketing and a bright future.
I saw none of those things with the PAC proposal.
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Hold on a minute. How many full houses does it take to make it pay? Yes one successful performance or even a handful of them throughout the year is still not enough to justify the expense. Besides, if the “geniuses” would have thought of a different financing model, one with much less burden on the general taxpayer the PAC would have probably be on its way.
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