David Galligan is the new President and CEO at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in St. Paul. He faces several challenges, including balancing the budget and keeping his tenants - four major arts organizations - happy.

	David Galligan faces new challenges as the President and CEO of the Ordway. (Courtesy Ordway Center for the Performing Arts)

David Galligan is settling in.

The Ordway held a public reception for him this week, but he's actually been at his desk for a while. We decided we'd check in and see how he's doing.

Galligan moved to the Twin Cities in 1986 to serve as the Walker Art Center's chief operating officer, and he's been here ever since. While the Walker is an enormous organization with a national reputation amongst cultural institutions, the Ordway will present a new set of challenges to Galligan. Perhaps his biggest challenge will be making a profit.

"Two out of every three years since it opened in 1985 have been deficit years for the Ordway," says Galligan.

"Some of those have been modest deficits but some of them have been as high as one and a half million dollars. This most recent deficit was nearly nine hundred thousand dollars and again in the year we're currently in the 2002 -2003 fiscal year the deficit that's projected is quite large. So obviously this is not a sustainable enterprise and it simply must be corrected. I think the more feasable or interesting route is to ask the community for greater support.I think the Ordway has been perhaps a bit shy and bashful in the past about doing that."

Galligan says the public may have the impression the Ordway is a lucrative organization because of the expensive productions it hosts. But he says it costs money to create a production that makes money. Galligan says he needs to get the word out about how the Ordway operates and why it needs public support. He's particularly proud of the Ordway's work with education, specifically with the metro school districts.

"There are more kids coming from those two school systems to the Ordway than coming to any other cultural attraction in the Twin Cities. When I first discovered that I was truly astounded," says Galligan.

"Obviously those young minds are the most precious kind of commodity. And educating in the performing arts is a challenge, it's difficult. What I find amazing and wonderful about the Ordway is its deep commitment to education around the performing arts. It really makes it a model and not just in the Twin Cities but nationally."

The Ordway develops and hosts national touring musicals and theatrical events. It's also landlord to four major local arts institutions: The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Minnesota Opera and the Schubert Club.

While the Ordway was built to serve these core tenants, they quickly found they were having to make way for the revenue generating touring shows. The local groups voiced loud disappointment with the dates they were allotted for their performances. Some even went looking for their own buildings.

Galligan says he wants to change that. He says he's committed to treating the tenants as team members when it comes to putting together the Ordway calendar.

"There's no way around the team approach to the governance of the Ordway center - it is simply a fantastically beautiful, warm, comfortable, inviting, magical space and many many organizationas and people want access to it. I've made a major effort of working very closely from the very beginning with those organizations," Galligan says.

"I've spent really many many hours weekly in meetings with those key constituent groups so that we can work through all of those logistical and practical questions. And I've gotta say how exciting that really has been. No one has a magic wand - certainly I don't - a miracle is not happening just because we're talking. But I'm very confident that there's a team being built, that of these collaborations will develop a plan that will make those organizations feel truly at home, which is what I want them to feel there."

Galligan says he's interested in developing partnerships with local organizations to produce new local shows. And he's talking to the competition too. He's working with Minneapolis theater promoters who bring in the big broadway shows to see if they will coordinate their programming with the Ordway's.

"If the theater season with Minneapolis is reconstructed it has all kinds of economic implications. It lessens the pressure on the Ordway financially or it could potentially. It lessens the pressure on the calendar of the Ordway and those dates - possibly freeing up those dates for use by the resident organizations. So it's all interconnected - it's like the breaking up of an ice flow but I think that ice flow is breaking up. Everyday I come to work and it breaks up more. I see more blue water and take more joy and pleasure in what's happening around the Ordway right now."

David Galligan, new President and CEO of the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in St. Paul.