A scuttled contract hurt Tacoma Arts Live. Debt doomed its second act | Opinion
Last week Tacoma’s performing arts scene was hit with the kind of news that hurts to hear. Tacoma Arts Live will wind down the majority of its programming at the end of this performance season and put its home — the Tacoma Armory — up for sale.
It’s the end of a decades-old arts organization just five years after it seemed to have won a new lease on life.
Bitterness still persists over how Tacoma’s government handled a contract previously held by Tacoma Arts Live back in 2021. So, it was fair to wonder if this was an aftereffect of a disagreement that resulted in Tacoma Arts Live exiting its long-time role of managing and boosting three city-owned theaters.
Not exactly, according to Tacoma Arts Live board of trustees president Lisa Kremer. The messy break-up that ended the organization’s management of the Pantages, the Rialto and the Theater on the Square, probably didn’t help keep the organization viable.
Still, Kremer said it was the organization’s next chapter that turned out to be unsustainable. It’s a journey that Tacoma Arts Live was going to take whether or not it had kept on managing the theaters, and one that ended with millions of dollars in debt. Its new home in the Armory was ultimately too expensive to operate.
That doesn’t mean the City of Tacoma did right by Tacoma Arts Live in 2021. In an alternate reality, the organization could be selling the Armory while still pumping talent, donations and passion into the city’s theater district.
It won’t have that opportunity. After June, the organization will focus on educational programming. From where, and run by whom, is all unclear. It’s a much diminished role from what the organization was able to accomplish in the past, and what it was able to do up till now.
Moving into the Armory
Back in 2021, Tacoma Arts Live had to leave its offices next to the Pantages at the end of its theater-management contract with Tacoma. The organization needed a new home where it could reinvent itself.
As fate would have it, a generous local patron had been preparing a historic building for the organization to use. Even better, the property would eventually belong to Tacoma Arts Live. The donor, commercial developer Fred Roberson, promised to deed the Armory to the arts organization in his estate.
The Armory, built in the first decade of the 1900s for the National Guard, had already lived many lives before Roberson acquired it. The site that at various points hosted gala balls, royal visits, boxing matches and overflow jail cells was now at the ready to give Tacoma Arts Live a second act.
That was a relief for local arts boosters, many of whom were disappointed to see the City of Tacoma give the theater management contract to an out-of-town, for-profit company called ASM Global. In 2021, the city hired an outside consultant and decided to enter an open bidding process that asked potential property managers to propose contracts that would dramatically change the way money flowed through the theaters.
Tacoma Arts Live said the changes the city was asking for would have made it impossible for them to do business. The City of Tacoma’s events and venues department said its request for proposals didn’t require these changes, and that it would have considered a variety of financial arrangements.
In the end, Tacoma Arts Live didn’t put in a bid, and the city accepted a contract proposal from ASM Global. The for-profit, international management company did include the suggested changes to the theaters’ financial operations.
The Armory is an expensive place to operate
Tacoma Arts Live became something new. It continued booking shows in the downtown theaters, but it also became the owner and operator of a massive new venue.
The building’s largest space, the “parade floor,” has hosted a beer and music festival called Brew53, the Arts at the Armory expo, and roller skating nights. The Eleanor Roosevelt Room served as a theater performance space. The organization held educational programs and an arts business incubator.
But in the end, the organization wasn’t sitting on the renovated historic property free and clear. It paid Roberson’s estate more than $860,000 to complete the transfer of the building, Kremer said, and then it took on more debt to make the building work as an arts and events venue.
Roberson’s work on the building had made it “habitable,” Kremer said. But the building needed more to be useful for the organization. That included both equipment and improvements like eliminating a giant trough that bisected the parade floor.
The organization is now saddled with $3 million in debt. The monthly payments? Around $25,000, Kremer said. The organization already had an annual fundraiser and a generous cadre of donors. The additional money they needed was more than they could ask for.
“This is Mackenzie Scott kind of territory,” Kremer said, referring to the billionaire philanthropist.
I asked Kremer who she thought might be in the market for a giant, renovated armory. She said her dream is for someone to buy the building and contract with Tacoma Arts Live so it can continue operations.
They’ve proven they’re good at it, she said.
“We’ve really done a great job of using the Armory,” Kremer said, adding that with public events, the arts business incubator, education programs and private space rentals, “we’re busy almost every day of the year.”
Regardless of what happens, though, she said the space is in great condition.
“We’ve done a really good job of preparing this building for whoever comes next,” she said, adding, “I say somewhat bitterly.”
This story was originally published February 5, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
