Strapped Gaslamp Theatre Dark, So Patron Reneges on $35,000 Pledge

Citing its “self-created debacle,” a benefactor of the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company said Friday that she plans to renege on an outstanding pledge of $35,000--a promise that had won Elizabeth North a theater named after her.

Last year, North pledged $70,000 to the company as part of a contract agreement in which the Gaslamp renamed the smaller of two houses on 4th Avenue the Elizabeth North Theatre. She has already paid the first $35,000.

Since then, however, the 10-year-old Gaslamp has incurred serious financial problems, which halted the production of its current season in May.

North said the cancellation of the season violated the initial agreement.

“The contract donation agreement called for it to be a currently operated theater by Gaslamp,” said North. “They were to have this lease at this theater for 15 years. It said nothing about their not having the money to do anything and closing up the theater.”

The lawyer for the Gaslamp disagreed with North’s reading of the contract.

“The conditions to the agreement was that she get publicity about her donation and that the theater was renamed, and that’s it,” said David Herring. “The theater was renamed, and plays were put on the first part of this year.

“We fell on hard times financially. The plays will continue to go on,” Herring continued, referring to two plays booked by the theater in July and a stated intention by managing director Kit Goldman to resume production in the fall.

The money, which becomes due Tuesday, is actually a fraction of the funds needed by the Gaslamp if it is to resume operations in the fall.

Goldman said the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company needs $100,000 to get the fall season under way. That’s down from a figure of $350,000 that finance committee chairman Ted Considine quoted in May.

At the time, Considine said $1.5 million was needed for the company to remain solvent.

As part of that effort to remain solvent, negotiations are under way to reduce the rent at the Hahn to $5,000 a month, an agreement Goldman said she expects to have accomplished in July. The building is owned by the same limited partnership that owns the Horton Grand Hotel. One of those partners is Goldman’s husband, developer Dan Pearson.

North said the $35,000 she pledged is sitting in a separate account in her name, and she will send the money if the company “can get (its) affairs straightened out.”

“Through no fault of ours, the Gaslamp’s financial practices of operation have dealt them what now appears to be an untenable financial position,” she said, reading from a prepared statement. “We are deeply disappointed that Gaslamp . . . has perhaps not only destroyed our own dreams but their own as well.”

Many blame the theater’s financial problems on its high overhead. Its monthly rent, $1,800 at the Elizabeth North and $10,000 at the Hahn Cosmopolitan, requires boffo box office business, which the Gaslamp didn’t deliver in the last season. Sales hovered at 50% or less at the Hahn and 65-70% at the Elizabeth North, said James Strait, who was ousted as producing director along with the rest of the artistic staff earlier this year.

It’s the second time in three years that the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre has fallen out with a patron for whom a theater was named.

In 1987, patron Charles Deane, citing concerns about the Gaslamp’s fiscal management, reneged on a $250,000 pledge to the new theater that had been named after him.

The Deane Theatre was renamed the Hahn Cosmopolitan after benefactor Ernest Hahn in 1988.