By John Soltes
Editor-in-Chief
RUTHERFORD (April 27, 2009, 1:40 p.m.) — The Williams Center’s history is etched into its side like a cave drawing from ancient times. On the imposing brick wall that faces east toward Route 17, beneath the white block letters that spell out Williams Center, is the washed-out name of the theater’s past: Rivoli-Rutherford. The sign is a local landmark, as much an institution of South Bergen as the Carlstadt water tower or Meadowlands landfills.
Throughout its 90-year history, the facility has seen many setbacks, from shaky finances to damaging fires.
Now, the Williams Center, which encompasses the refurbished Rivoli and several movie theaters, is showing signs of financial soundness, something it could not boast of just a few years ago.
The center’s trustees report that the facility is slowly slipping off its bleeding red dress of economic loss and moving toward more stable black attire.
The center, perhaps to the surprise of local residents, even posted a profit this past fiscal year, officials said.
How it happened
The William Carlos Williams Center for the Arts, a nonprofit corporation, operates a network of theaters in downtown Rutherford that has been offering entertainment to the local community for decades.
According to financial statements given to The Leader newspaper, the Williams Center has seen an approximate $50,000 positive swing in the past three fiscal years.
Just a few years ago, the financial picture was bleak. For the year ending June 30, 2006, the Williams Center saw a $255,190 loss, or $44,161 when excluding depreciation.
One year later that financial loss shrunk to $98,731, or $26,141 when excluding depreciation.
The trend continued in 2008, according to an independent auditor’s report filed by Couto, DeFranco and Magone. The center saw a $64,469 loss, or $3,592 profit when excluding depreciation.
Ed Ryan, who serves as treasurer of the Williams Center Board of Trustees and runs Rutherford’s Ryan Financial, estimates that for the year ending June 30, 2009, the center could see a profit north of $20,000. At first glance, it seems that the potential profits are smaller, but Ryan said the depreciation costs — for capital improvements from more than 20 years ago — are essentially a “paper loss” that need to be factored into an audit, but don’t have an effect on the bottom line.
A closer look
For the fiscal year ending in June 2008, the Williams Center brought in $18,550 in government contributions — from the Borough of Rutherford’s municipal budget, modest individual and corporate contributions of $1,376 and nearly $43,000 from other fundraising efforts.
The largest chunk of revenue came from the cinemas and concession stand ($294,420), in-kind contributions from the county for facilities and utilities ($130,000) and live performance and rentals ($69,615). The in-kind contribution is not taxpayer money from the county, but rather an appraisal of how much it costs to run the center. “It does not reflect any real dollars received,” Ryan wrote in an e-mail.
Bergen County owns the property, and offers the center a lease of $1 per year, which includes preservation, capital maintenance projects, electric and gas costs. The nonprofit takes care of day-to-day maintenance.
“Financially, we have turned this thing around,” Ryan said during a joint interview with Dr. Joseph C. De Fazio, president of the Williams Center Board. “We’re no longer acting as a production house. We’re a theater that rents its space out to clients. ... The financial risk is reduced.”
So, instead of putting on its own productions or paying exorbitant artist fees for in-house concerts, the Williams Center now charges its clients $3,500 for a full-day rental of the 642-seat Rivoli, now known as the George W. Newman Theatre. The rate is cut in half to $1,750 for half-day rentals. Rates that, De Fazio said, are reasonably below market value for similar performing arts centers in the area.
Also included in the restructuring of the Williams Center is an emphasis on smaller birthday parties and day trips for recreation camps. Several groups from Bergen County and elsewhere use the cinema space for children’s events. Rutherford’s Washington School, Fairview Grammar School and Union City High School are all recent clients, De Fazio said. The group rate is $8 per person, which includes a movie, popcorn and soda.
Private parties for 30 guests cost $425, which includes unlimited popcorn and soda and a private viewing. De Fazio said many children celebrate their birthday party at the center, but they’ve had some adults, too. “Things are looking up,” De Fazio said. “Our mission is to bring affordable arts to Southern Bergen County. That’s our mission.”
Regular moviegoers still get a bargain; the center charges $7 for adults and $5 for children. For comparison, the AMC Clifton Commons charges $10.50 for adults and $7.50 for children. “We’re essentially subsidizing the ticket prices,” De Fazio said.
Because of the new business model’s emphasis on rentals, the risk of selling tickets to fill seats is carried by the clients, not the Williams Center. So far, Ryan and De Fazio report that the clients have found success with their respective events.
And the client list runs the gamut from dance recitals to doo-wop concerts to movie screenings, making the Williams Center stage one that can host a crooner from the 1950s on a Thursday night and a crowd of scantily clad teenagers for a cult movie the next night (as was the case for a recent screening of “Repo!: The Genetic Opera,” a horror musical that elicited a striptease from an audience member on the old Rivoli stage).
A far tamer crowd was expected on April 21 and April 28, for the Ace in the Hole Productions Inc.’s show featuring local comic Uncle Floyd Vivino and singers Marilyn and Will Roy.
De Fazio said that as of April 17, Ace in the Hole had booked nearly 300 tickets for the April 21 show and nearly 500 tickets for the April 28 show. More than 20 buses, filled to capacity with a mostly senior citizen crowd, were expected to descend on downtown Rutherford, ready to fill the complex.
The Williams Center only received the rental cost from those successful events, but the return business, De Fazio said, is just as good.
“The place is being used,” Ryan said. “It is a gem we have in town. This place can be very profitable. ... It’s nice to see that the decision the board made is working.”
The center has earned, whether rightly or not, a reputation for being under-utilized and unseemly — a vacuous space in the heart of a thriving borough. Ryan said the center, though, has picked up in business, and currently has more programming than it did three years ago.
“You have to make decisions that are good for your financial health,” Ryan said. “If the Williams Center went down, it would change the downtown.”
Bergen County Freeholder Bernadette McPherson, the former mayor of Rutherford, who sits on the Williams Center Board of Trustees, said the onus falls on the board to turn around the reputation and “restore those good feelings about the center.”
“One of the things that we need to do and that we are poised to do is market the center in the right way, because the theaters have been renovated,” McPherson said during an in-person interview earlier this year. “We need to make the Williams Center a destination for families and people here in South Bergen.”
Rocky road ahead?
The shift in the Williams Center’s financial management precedes the opening of a new multi-screen movie theater set to open at the Meadowlands Xanadu complex in East Rutherford. If fully realized, it will be one of the largest networks of movie theaters in the world.
McPherson said that Xanadu is on the minds of the trustees, but that they feel the Williams Center will still be a destination for locals. “I think with Xanadu in place, there is going to be and always will be a place for the Williams Center,” she said. “There is a sense that people want to stay closer to home. ... And the Williams Center is a place that people would feel comfortable going to and calling home.”
As far as upgrades, the Williams Center has a new roof, refurbished cinemas and a new heating and air conditioning system. The inside stairway will also be replaced this year. A public bid is expected to be advertised in May.
All is not perfect yet. The center failed to file its tax returns on time, a mandate by the State of New Jersey for all nonprofit organizations looking for exemptions in the income tax category. Ryan said that the oversight was due to the unfortunate health of its former auditor. The tax returns, he added, are now up to date and have been filed.
The center’s Web site is largely static, highlighting events from summer 2007. Movie showtimes are available, but with the center turning to rentals, there is no streamlined calendar of events.
And cosmetically, the outside of the center is slightly blighted — call it historical pastiche. Its red bricks, some of which sport graffiti tags, are lined with haphazard grout repairs. Its outside movie poster cases advertise films that haven’t been in theaters in months (on Friday, April 24, “Bride Wars” was still displayed, even though it was released in early January). In fact, of the several movie posters on display outside, only one showcased a future film, “Terminator Salvation.”
There is an obtrusive box office outside that is no longer used, plus a metal sign where the letters making up the Williams Center are bent and shoddily placed. At a recent visit to the center, water was dripping in the lobby and paint was peeling beneath an outside sign.
The overall look is of a modern cinema awkwardly emerging, with wrinkles and warts, from a movie palace of yesteryear, when the likes of Abbott & Costello and the Glenn Miller Orchestra would take the stage.
It certainly is a phoenix rising — with a few ruffled feathers.
The past and present
The Williams Center began in 1978 when a group of philanthropists, headed by Fairleigh Dickinson, Oscar Schwidetsky and Peter and Sally Sammartino, started transforming the old movie palace to a property consisting of two live theaters, three cinemas and an open-air meeting gallery, all fronted by a vest-pocket park. Currently, the Williams Center shows movies in three cinemas downstairs and one upstairs. The Newman Theatre (the Rivoli) is reserved for special rentals.
From this legacy, a board of trustees was formed, with members changing as the years progressed.
In recent years, the board eliminated the position of a full-time executive director.
Currently, De Fazio serves as president of the board, while Denise Ross serves as vice president. Evelyn Spath-Mercado is the secretary and Ryan serves as treasurer.
Other board members, according to an e-mail released to The Leader, include McPherson, Rutherford Councilwoman Maura Keyes, Glenn Elliot, Cathy Botti, Ken Snapp, Jim McCarthy and Daphne Williams Fox, a direct descendant of local poet William Carlos Williams, the center’s namesake.
All are volunteers.
County Executive Dennis McNerney serves as an honorary ex-officio member. Rutherford Councilwoman Kimberly Birdsall serves as council liaison to the Williams Center, while Frank Agostino, of Calo Agostino in Hackensack, serves as pro-bono counsel to the board.
The board meets once a month in the lower-level meeting room of the Williams Center. Currently, the center employs an administrative assistant to schedule events, among other tasks, plus three cinema managers and cinema employees. All of their salaries come from the nonprofit operating budget of the board of trustees.
And, according to Ryan and De Fazio, the trustees have it in mind to one day hire a full-time executive director and possibly move back to being more of a production house.
But for now, staying in the black and removing financial risk are the trustees’ main priorities. In the past, Ryan admitted, the center was taking too much financial risk, putting on programs that needed a good attendance to break even.
But the future, according to Ryan, looks good for the Williams Center — though only coupled with hard work. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
Bergen County Film Commission
One tenant that the Williams Center may no longer have is the Bergen County Film Commission, which in 2008 put on a host of cinematic programming at the Rivoli and downstairs theaters. The commission, which grew out of a resolution from the Bergen County Board of Chosen Freeholders, is in shambles today.
Its Web site is currently suspended and its officials are upset with what they call a lack of funding for their programming. Ryan said that the Williams Center, which housed the commission, is a third party to the dispute between the county and the film program.
Tom Meyers, the executive director of the film commission, was hoping to continue at the Rutherford facility. But his hopes seem dashed. “The commission is on life support basically,” he said in January of this year.
Without an influx of funds from the county, Meyers doesn’t see how the commission could continue programming film symposia and retrospectives. It appears that last year’s inaugural Reel Jersey Film Festival, held at the Williams Center, may be the first and last of its kind. “After that, we finished in September,” Meyers said. “We had no money left.”
McPherson, who is the official liaison between the Bergen County Board of Chosen Freeholders and film commission, said that she understands Meyers’ frustration, but a line item in the county budget was never an option. Also, she was hopeful that the film commission’s stated purpose of fostering economic development by bringing film work to the county could still be realized. Sponsorship funding, like the film commission received from the Bergen County Economic Development Commission in 2008, is the method that McPherson said was the understood means of financing the initiative in the future.
“I certainly spent a good deal of my time devoted to generating sponsorships for the film commission,” she said. “I certainly know where the hope for (county) funding comes from, but the expectation that it would be there, I can’t really answer that. It’s just not something that would be feasible or was anticipated would take place.”
There seems to be philosophical differences between the parties involved. Meyers said that his group’s programming was the direction the Williams Center should be heading in, “away from first-run” movies.
He also said that the Williams Center Board of Trustees should have more representation than just the residents of Rutherford, since it’s a county-owned facility.
McPherson said that the history of the Williams Center Board proves that although the center is housed in Rutherford, it has not been a wholly Rutherford-run institution. “I certainly don’t think that there is an unspoken rule of Rutherford residents only serving on it,” McPherson said. “I think that’s probably more or less an outgrowth of the fact that for many years the county was not paying attention to it. Over the decade that I have served there, there have been members of the board that did not live here in town.”
McPherson, who has served on the board since she was a Rutherford councilwoman in the 1990s, was alluding to the fact that for many years county officials did not know the Williams Center was on the tax rolls as a county facility. McPherson made the link as she served concurrently as Rutherford’s mayor and on the Bergen County Board of Chosen Freeholders.
Meyers stressed he does not have bad blood with the Williams Center and is appreciative of the support from McPherson, who helped found the film commission.
But he refused to continue with programming and put out finances from his own pocket. The commission, he said, didn’t even have enough money to send out stationary in the mail. “I don’t have a staff to mail a letter,” he said. “I shouldn’t have to go out of pocket to mail stamps and stationary.”
In January, Meyers said he was at a “crossroads,” and now it seems the commission is at a dead end. “We can’t operate as a film commission without any support,” he said. “We’re talking about a minor investment.”
Meyers floated around the figure of $15,000-$20,000. “That’s enough for us to do a year of programming,” he said. “We can’t do it without any funding whatsoever.”
The county, as Meyers rightly surmised, has no current plans to appropriate money for the commission. “I hope my passion is not confused with nastiness or ingratitude," he said. "I’m basically an optimistic guy and I hope things change. But I know the likelihood of getting dime one is zilch right now.”
Instead, Meyers said the Williams Center has become a “hiring hall,” which he doesn’t believe satisfies its own mission statement of promoting and providing programs in the arts including live performances, art classes, arts-in-education, foreign and domestic cinema presentations, classical productions and cultural events earmarked for the ethnic diversity and participation of the surrounding community.
McPherson said the Williams Center is certainly meeting the goals of its mission statement. “One thing I think the Williams Center is known for is the arts and education with the school systems in this particular area,” she said. “I think it is probably a destination once a year, if not twice a year, for class trips for live performances that are educational in nature. ... One of the projects that the board has undertaken is free passes to children in the area schools on their birthdays, and I think that when that happens and certainly the children come for the arts and education, they’re likely to return with their parents to see one of the children’s films that are very popular.”
Nancy O’Mallon, vice chair of the commission, said that the group still exists, but no programming is scheduled. “We can’t operate,” she said. “It’s not that we disbanded, we just can’t operate.”
Instead, the focus for O’Mallon has been shifting her time to the Fort Lee Film Commission, which champions the history of filmmaking in the eastern Bergen County borough.
“It’s a shame,” she said. “We have been working on a documentary project about the first female filmmaker, Alice Guy Blaché. ... She was an incredible filmmaker in her own right. We started working on this documentary because nobody knows about her.”
The project was originally under the auspices of the Bergen County Film Commission. Now, the film is a product from Fort Lee. Meyers even said the Bergen County Film Commission’s logo will be pulled from the opening credits.
McPherson said the film commission will hopefully move on. “While there may not be money in place for programming of that nature, it certainly is my intention to have the work of the film commission go on,” she said.
Putting the county back in the Williams Center
Additional county initiatives may soon come to the Williams Center as well. One of the ideas being floated around, according to McPherson, is establishing a county satellite office at the center, which can be used by the residents of South Bergen.
Along those lines, McPherson will host an economic special session at the Williams Center Thursday, April 30, with the expressed commitment of connecting “Bergen County working families in economic distress with the resources to help.”
Some of the issues to be discussed include dealing with foreclosures, health services, job assistance and paying food bills.
As the future of the Williams Center is contemplated over, worried about and prayed on, the brick-lined complex still sits, like a monolith. A bumpy road in the future may be an inevitability, as plenty of bumps dot the Rivoli’s past. The property just off Park Avenue in Rutherford has lived history and is now a living, breathing mark of South Bergen’s history.
One can almost hear the ghosts of past vaudeville stars traipsing around the property like nothing has changed.
Oh, how they’re wrong.
