The fate of the Civic Auditorium may be decided this week. Here’s what you should know

The Redding City Council will likely decide this Tuesday whether to allocate more than a million dollars a year to keep the Civic Auditorium open. 

If council members decide against providing these extra funds, the event space will close, said Civic Auditorium General Manager Julie Dyar in a recent interview with Shasta Scout. 

At the Jan. 20 Redding City Council meeting, Councilmembers Tenessa Audette and Erin Resner — who are on an ad hoc committee to help figure out a plan for keeping the Civic open — presented an update on their discussions with Advance Redding, an organization that was launched by Bethel Church leadership in 2011 as the city looked for a way to save the Civic space back then.

Now, the Civic is facing yet another financial crisis, this time largely due to challenges maintaining profits after changes in the entertainment venue industry, according to Advance Redding officials who say the organization’s atypical lease agreement with the city also has also played a role.

During the mid-January council meeting, Audette said the Civic would need an additional about $1.4 million to $1.6 million a year in order to stay open. To meet that gap, Advance Redding officials are requesting funding of $116,000 a month until the end of fiscal year 2025-2026. That’s money the city would likely have to continue to pay indefinitely, unless other solutions emerge over time. Because the city doesn’t currently have readily available funds, Audette and Resner said they’ve been looking into other ways the Civic can be funded, including potential donors, but have hit an impasse. 

“It doesn’t feel like that there, at least at this point in time, has been anybody community-wise who is willing to help in that gap funding space,” Resner said.

The council voted to forego the Civic’s rent for the next six months and directed staff to come back with both short- and long-term solutions. According to the agenda packet for Feb. 3’s meeting, it appears that mainly short-term fixes will be discussed to determine how to avoid immediate closure of the Civic, though long-term options are also on the agenda in less detail. 

Where did the funding gap come from?

Civic Auditorium Manager Dyar told Shasta Scout in an interview that the event space makes its revenue primarily from ticket sales, but also through food and beverage sales and charges from when the facility is rented out for events. She explained that there are about $1.6 million in annual overhead costs, which includes electricity, insurance, staff and administrative expenses, and there are additional programming costs associated with events. The Civic hosted 70 events last year, she said. 

Over the past few years, Advance Redding has been declining in net income. While the organization had a net revenue of more than $1 million in 2022 that was followed by net losses of $25,000 in 2023 and $425,000 in 2024. 

Prior to Advance Redding operating the Civic, the city of Redding had run the facility itself. In 2011, the Civic was at risk of closure due to financial constraints the city had been facing. At the same time, the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry (BSSM), which was outgrowing its campus at the time, needed a space for its students. 

As a solution, Bethel Church proposed the city partner with a nonprofit organization to manage the facility and help revitalize it. Church leaders formed Advance Redding as a non-religious organization to operate the Civic while concurrently renting space back to the church, helping to subsidize the city venue. Dyar said that Advance Redding’s original lease with the city alleviated the city of its responsibility to run the Civic while providing a space for BSSM — all while holding at least 20 events a year in a structure that provided a financial solution for the city. 

That was more than a decade ago. Dyar said the first few years of running the Civic were accompanied by a learning curve, given that Advance Redding was a new organization that didn’t come with previous industry knowledge and experience in events and facility management. She said she knew BSSM wouldn’t be a sub-tenant of the space forever, so while figuring out current programming and shows that could benefit the community, the organization also had to think ahead about what the future would look like without BSSM as a major alleviator of rent and other costs. 

At the end of 2023, Bethel Church notified Advance Redding that it would be terminating its sublease since it no longer needed the Civic’s space. Dyar told Shasta Scout in earlier reporting that BSSM’s rent contributed only about 20% of total revenue on average, and Bethel’s use of the space contributed to 18% of Advance Redding’s expenses, leaving a 2% profit annually over more than a decade. 

A few months later, Dyar said, nationwide ticket sales started seeing new trends and became “volatile.” She said after the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an exuberance among ticket-buyers, but once that excitement settled down, the market for live entertainment became unpredictable. She explained that younger generations, who on average make less money than older ones, were also starting to make up the majority of concert-goers, and that fewer people were buying tickets due to inflation. Production costs were also on the rise, and entertainment companies had to start lowering ticket prices, which also lowered profits.

After Bethel’s departure from the Civic and the almost-concurrent volatility of ticket sales, Dyar said, Advance Redding’s reserves allowed them to stay afloat, but that money didn’t last for long. The nonprofit had its highest net revenue loss in the organization’s history in 2024, bringing in revenue that was almost half a million dollars less than expenses.

Last summer, Advance Redding presented its increasing financial challenges to the council, with Dyar requesting that the city restructure its lease agreement to provide a stronger structure for long-term sustainability now that Bethel is no longer an ongoing tenant. Dyar told Shasta Scout that the city’s current lease agreement is atypical compared to other cities, which have invested in their official entertainment venues in a variety of ways that help with profitability.

The city council voted in August to allocate $675,000 to Advance Redding to help the Civic continue operating in the short term. Now, about six months later, the organization is facing the risk of imminent closure if the city doesn’t contribute further. 

According to a recent Advance Redding press release, Bethel Church leaders who were until recently part of the organization’s board — founding board president Kris Vallotton and board member Charlie Harper — have both resigned from the nonprofit. Eric Hiatt, a local business owner who was a member of Advance Redding’s board previously, was named the new president, effective Jan. 1 of this year. 

What will be lost if the Civic closes? 

If the Civic Auditorium closes, that would cost the city of Redding about $1.24 million annually, according to Community Services Director Travis Menne, who also presented at Jan. 20’s city council meeting. That cost would be the result of the loss of both sales tax and tourism taxes, as well as the new ongoing expenses that would result from having to maintain the empty facility, such as security, utilities and maintenance.

Not only would the closure of the Civic cause financial losses to the city, but it would also create major cultural losses to the entire community, Dyar told Shasta Scout. She used the term “effervescence” to describe the type of feeling the Civic brings to the community, noting that event spaces like the Civic contribute to overall community wellbeing. 

“It’s specifically [about] coming together in a communal space and sharing that experience with people; that just does something for you,” she said. “You cannot put a price [on that]. I can’t charge for that.” 

Redding Vice Mayor Dr. Paul Dhanuka shared similar sentiments at last month’s city council meeting, saying that the Civic is too important of an asset to the community for it to be lost due to current budget constraints. He said that not only does the Civic bring revenue into the city, but it also gives people a reason to live and work in Redding.

“The hard reality is that our culture, these things, make the soul of a city, and they are easy to destroy, but very difficult to build and rebuild,” Dhanuka said. “We have to be very cautious before we just give up on this.” 

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