The Kalita Humphreys Theater needs a savior other than taxpayers

Our colleague Mark Lamster is right. A proposal for $7.63 million in the 2024 Dallas bond package for repairs to the Kalita Humphreys Theater will just keep kicking the can down the road. The historic building needs a more robust solution than that.

But we need to face a hard reality here as it relates to the city’s priorities. We opposed the extravagant $300 million wish list floated by the Dallas Theater Center last year, which would have included four new buildings, two underground parking garages, a restaurant, and a new bridge over Turtle Creek. In a city where basic needs like streets, utilities, litter and trash collection go unmet, that’s too much to ask of taxpayers.

Patches and plugs aren’t the right approach either, but that may be the best city taxpayers can do for now. With no master plan approved, the city proposes to fix the most dire needs, like HVAC. There’s $75,000 to remove or replace (not restore) broken fountains, something that would only compound the aesthetic damage already done to the site with renovations over the years. There’s also a proposal to spend $975,000 on another building on the site, which Lamster described as “universally reviled” and which has no real future in any long-term future. Treading water can be expensive.

The Kalita is historic. Designed by legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1955, it’s the only freestanding theater he designed whose construction would be completed before his death in 1959.

It occupies an important place geographically, as well as historically: adjacent to the Katy Trail, in a city park, in the heart of the tony Turtle Creek area.

What the Kalita needs is a new approach that gets City Hall off the hook for maintaining a building that is a civic treasure but that serves a fairly narrow constituency.

With that in mind, we can’t help but wonder if the Kalita presents an opportunity for the same kind of partnership that has created successful cultural amenities in other parts of the city, like Klyde Warren Park, the Dallas Arboretum, and the Dallas Zoo. As Lamster suggests, a private philanthropic group — preferably one with lots of influence and ties to the Turtle Creek neighborhood — could fill the fundraising gap and provide direction.

Alternatively, the city should be open to turning over ownership as well as management if that creates the best incentives for success. The theater is already designated a historic Dallas landmark, which helps ensure its preservation even without city ownership.

The Kalita’s primary tenant, the Dallas Theater Center, wants a solution that preserves the facility and gives them a place to stage shows. Beyond that, they aren’t picky. DTC executive director Kevin Moriarty told us, “We’re open to absolutely anything.” But after the failure of the $300 million plan to launch, the city told DTC it’s shifting its focus to other priorities. The Kalita will have to wait.

There’s a lot of space between the city’s proposed $7 million investment and a $300 million dream.

Somewhere in that space is an opportunity for Dallas’ serious arts philanthropists to step up, with a new plan and perhaps a new management or ownership structure, that could preserve a true cultural gem.

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