Western Canada’s longest continually operating theatre, the GRAND, is facing an uncertain future this year after negotiations between the GRAND society, funders, Arts Commons, and Allied REIT ended without an agreement.

The theatre, which was sold to Allied in 2021, has been operating in Calgary’s downtown for 112 years.

Erynn Lyster, Executive Director for the GRAND society, said that before the negotiations failed they had believed that all of the parties had come to a win-win solution for the arts sector in the city.

“In a nutshell, we had four players at the table, the GRAND, Arts Commons, funders, and Allied. In order for us to make this work, the GRAND society itself was prepared to dissolve and Arts Commons was going to come in as operators of the venue as they were in a better position to do that—it would have been absorbed into the bigger ecosystem that they manage in downtown Calgary,” said Lyster.

As a result of no agreement in place, she said that the future of the GRAND as a theatre was now uncertain.

As part of a potential agreement, the GRAND had asked for a time-limited reduction in rent to prove a more sustainable business model for the theatre. One that was backed by both funders and the arts community, and had been tacitly agreed to by those stakeholders.

“We thought everybody was in alignment. The proposal put forward, we felt, was a win-win for all parties involved. We were shocked when we heard a few weeks ago that Allied has rejected our proposal.”

Negotiations and plans had been years in the making

Lyster said that they were surprised by Allied saying no to a plan that had been in negotiations for almost a year and had been in the works for almost two.

Requests to Allied from LWC for an interview went unanswered by the time of publication of this story.

“We’ll continue to act in good faith with our landlords. We’ve had a good relationship throughout this whole tenure, and I hope that we can come to some solution. But it is important for us to let the community know that we’re now at the 11th hour, we have been proactive up till now working on plans,” said Lyster.

“The last thing I wanted to be was in this place where I’m going to have to let the community know that at this late stage, there’s a very real possibility we’re going to have to make a difficult decision later this year, and that Calgary may lose the oldest theatre in Western Canada.”

This latest setback for the theatre has not been the first in the history of the GRAND.

Work was undertaken in the early 2000s to save the theatre from demolition, and had a major renovation in 2006 to become Theatre Junction Grand.

During the pandemic, staff were laid off from the theatre, and the theatre itself was shut down for almost a year.

The availability of the theatre for groups wanting to put on specific shows was also criticized before the pandemic.

Lyster said that recently, the usage of the space has exceeded pre-pandemic levels. The theatre hosted 62 different shows in 2023, and 44 in 2022.

“We’ve recovered to better than pre-pandemic levels in terms of the use of this space, but we have to be realistic about exactly how much revenue we can bring in while still maintaining our mission to be accessible to the arts community,” she said.

Disappointment by arts community

Arts Commons CEO Alex Sarian said that he was disappointed with the outcome.

“Arts communities across Canada are facing a very fragile and precarious future, one which is made more uncertain with unpredictable venue partners,” he said.

“While our involvement wasn’t certain, we attempted to leverage our experience and expertise in managing, operating and maximizing arts and gathering spaces on behalf of Calgarians to support the leadership team at the Society in their efforts to retain the GRAND as a community arts space.”

Lyster said that like many arts organizations, expenses had exceeded revenues and that they were exploring options to find a “tricky balance” between making it affordable for arts groups while also making enough money to pay rent on the space.

“It wasn’t a long-term solution, we needed to come up with a different operating model. So we did, and we proposed it, we had all the players at the table, and we’re really excited about the plan. We had hoped to announce it to the community early this year,” she said.

“Everybody’s all sad and devastated. I’ve been on the phone non-stop just letting people know that this is a possibility, and those who knew of the plan are devastated because it seemed like such a good solution. To those that it’s all news to them are just devastated that this is possibly not going to be a venue that they can use in the future.”