Building the Case for a Heber Valley Arts Center

Client Challenge

The Wasatch County Arts Council and a coalition of local arts advocates wanted to build a dedicated community arts center to serve the Heber Valley's growing roster of theater, music, dance and visual arts groups, several of which had outgrown or were at risk of losing their current spaces. The vision centered on a privately funded, non-profit, tenant-operated facility on a donated site in Midway, but the Council and Coalition needed to know whether that model was realistic. They needed independent research on local arts-group demand, the financial viability of operating such a venue without public subsidy, the construction funding required, and the broader community and economic value the project might create.

Approach

Victus Advisors conducted an independent, third-party feasibility study across two phases. The market analysis phase gathered direct input from the community through a 90-minute focus group with representatives of eight local arts organizations and one-on-one follow-up interviews with the largest prospective tenants, then grounded that input in case studies of three comparable Utah arts venues, examining how each was funded, operated and subsidized. Building on those findings, the second phase translated the arts groups' stated needs into a recommended 65,000-square-foot facility program and utilization estimates, developed multi-year financial operating projections for a non-profit, tenant-operated model, analyzed governance and management options, reviewed private and public funding sources ranging from donation campaigns to tax increment financing and a RAP sales tax, and modeled the venue's 30-year economic and fiscal impact on Wasatch County using IMPLAN multipliers.

Benefits to Client

The study gave the Council and Coalition a clear-eyed foundation for their next decisions. The financial projections showed that a combined non-profit operation could generate roughly $1.9 million in first-year revenue and a modest operating profit of about $64,000, while making plain that the model would not throw off enough to cover capital reserves, which led to a recommendation to raise roughly $25.6 million covering construction and an endowment. The comparable-venue case studies surfaced practical lessons on design, staffing and the tradeoffs between tenant-operated and rental models, and the impact analysis projected nearly $194 million in cumulative net economic output and about $2.6 million in net local tax revenue over 30 years, along with a phased timeline and funding roadmap the Coalition could carry into fundraising, design and site decisions.