THUNDER BAY — The Thunder Bay Community Auditorium turned a profit in its first year under a new agreement with the city, according to the entertainment venue’s general manager.
“We had a few ups and downs throughout 2023, 2024, because you're starting over again in an ever-changing landscape out there, especially post pandemic,” said Trevor Hurtig, the general manager of the auditorium. “Overall, I think we're showing that we're seeing some steady growth and heading in the right direction.”
Starting in January 2023, the auditorium moved to what officials have called a more “arm’s length” arrangement between the not-for-profit organization that books, operates and maintains the city-owned facility and city hall itself. The original arrangement, dating back to when the performing arts centre was being planned over 40 years ago was “kind of murky, to put it mildly,” he said, as it was always a not-for-profit entity, “but there were also many things that we were doing that was very similar to a city department.”
Hurtig said the financials for 2024 are still being finalized.
Going forward, Hurtig said that revamping how the organization fundraises will be top-of-mind, as it will require a number of different sources of outside funding to keep the building running — not just relying on ticket sales from the shows the auditorium books itself, and hall rental revenues from third-party promoters and community groups.
Being an arts-based not-for-profit, it can access some grant funding from the City of Thunder Bay (city council awarded the auditorium just over $830,000 from the community, youth and cultural funding program for 2025), along with other organizations like the art gallery, Magnus Theatre, the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra and others.
Securing funding will be important, Hurtig said, as the facility has been undergoing — and will continue to require in the coming years — various equipment maintenance, repairs and upgrades.
“We didn't really know what we're getting into in 2023, so we ran extremely lean and tried to really watch our spending,” he said. “Last year (2024), we had to kind of finally give in and spend on a few things that we desperately needed.” And even though the financials for last year aren’t finalized yet, he said that some of the larger shows that came in should effectively offset the increase in spending.
Going forward, he added, the auditorium will have to address some larger upgrades to things like mechanical equipment and the HVAC system.
“(It’s) just the reality of the fact that we're operating a building that is 40 years old and, although it is in very good shape for its age, it still requires a lot of work to be done over the next few years,” Hurtig said.
And for the local organizations who book the auditorium, Hurtig said that significantly raising rental rates is not part of the plan.
“We’ve done our best to try to keep that down wherever we can,” he said. “As I'm talking about us climbing out of the pandemic, we're very cognizant of the fact that local dance schools, for example, are in that same boat, the symphony's in that same boat.”
“We want to do whatever we can to keep things reasonable while also trying to keep the lights on.”
