For more than 250 nights every year in downtown Springfield, Cindy Anzalotti and her staff of five make sure that the show goes on.

At the Springfield Performing Arts Development Corp., Anzalotti is the president overseeing CityStage as well as the management of Symphony Hall. “They are two completely different venues,” she said, “one grand and elegant, with great acoustics — the music really moves you. Then the smaller CityStage is more intimate, and people can really feel connected with what is happening on stage.”

It’s been more than 10 years since the nonprofit organization SPADC started running the two theaters, and Anzalotti has been there since the beginning.

While the economy has forced governments to trim much arts spending off balance sheets across the nation, she is happy to note that her organization has been running in the black for the last several years.

Anzalotti talked with BusinessWest recently to talk about the past, the present, and the future of the corporation that makes sure that, when the curtain rises at the city’s two preeminent theaters, all the world’s a stage.

Calling the Shots

The SPADC came about in 1998, in the wake of StageWest’s departure from the city’s cultural landscape. When StageWest filed for bankruptcy in May of that year, then-Mayor Michael Albano felt strongly about maintaining a viable theater presence downtown.

Anzalotti originally came on board as director of Development for the SPADC, but it was only a matter of a few months before she found herself in the top spot.

“We were all hired in October, and we began operations in December,” she said, “which was a nightmare. It’s very hard to get a theater up and running in under two months. Add to that, no one was in the building since the previous May, so all the electricity was turned off, the gas was off, the place was a mess — the refrigerators were all still full. When StageWest left, they just shut the door, turned out the lights, and left. It was a disaster area, and took quite a while to clean up.

“It took a long time to get the phones turned on, the lights turned back on. StageWest left a lot of bad debt, unfortunately, so in order to get utilities back, we had to leave large deposits. It was a big challenge in those first years.”

From the beginning, the challenges weren’t just economic. Albano decided to take back operations of Symphony Hall from the state and transfer them to the SPADC. In the second year of operations at both venues, the company was in the red for more than $750,000. But by the end of the third year, it turned its first profit. By the sixth year of business, it was completely out of debt, and has been in the black ever since.

“That was a big step, especially given the economic times the area has been going through,” said Anzalotti.

This past year, when there was more drama in the headlines than there was on most stages, Anzalotti said ticket sales were down a bit, and that was not a big surprise. “We were down only 2.3%, which is phenomenal, considering what everybody else went through. That figure is nothing in this business.”

CityStage and Symphony Hall do not produce original material for the two venues. Instead, the SPADC books touring performances and rents the venerable hall to a host of organizations — although rentals of the Symphony Hall space are down. “Our biggest tenant is the Springfield Symphony Orchestra,” she said, “but we do all the graduations, we have the Berkshire Ballet come in every year, the Moscow Ballet, we usually have a lot of other performers or comedians come in. However, last year a lot of promoters didn’t want to take the chance. So our rental revenue really went down substantially.

“It is a real risk in promotions,” she continued. “Getting the artists that would fit into that space can range anywhere from $5,000 to $250,000. No one was willing to do that.”

The SPADC wasn’t the only arts-based organization that saw its state and federal funding trimmed this past year. Last May, the state Senate proposed a 57% cut in spending for the Mass. Cultural Council, a leading source of arts funding for the Bay State.

Anzalotti said the cuts ran deep. “Last year we were earmarked for $200,000, and because of the budget cuts, that went down to $5,000. I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth … a lot of other agencies got nothing. This year we’ve been completely cut out of the state budget, like most other arts organizations.”

She said there is a common misconception that ticket prices underwrite the entirety of a production’s expenses, which isn’t always the case. “A production can cost us anywhere from $70,000 to $90,000, and our gross potential is only $98,000. That’s with 100% of tickets sold at 100% of the ticket price.”

Hitting the Mark

Anzalotti is happy to have the support of both the business community and the theater-going public. “We work closely with the Springfield Business Improvement District,” she said. “They have been great to us. We work with WGBY with some productions; there’s a great Celtic Christmas show that they’re working with us on. We are very excited to be hosting the Hall of Fame’s enshrinement this year.”

But it is the people in the seats that really make each night a true success. “The community has really stood by us all these years, and they are coming to the shows more and more often,” she said. “We have a lot of great sponsors in the community. But the number-one thing is, if we didn’t have the ticket buyers, it wouldn’t matter how much in donations we got, so I give kudos to the community for supporting us, and for coming out more and more.”

The new season is gearing up to be a big one for the SPADC, and Anzalotti said that they have decided to go boldly forth. “Overall, I’ve got 61 productions that we ourselves are putting on next year. With our rentals, right now we are already over 125 event nights next year. So we are growing.”

It’s no surprise that people looking for value in entertainment have been re-evaluating their spending dollars. Anzalotti mentioned the healthy figures Hasbro posted in its first quarter of this year. “Board-game sales are up, things that keep people at home or in their community are up, that’s what we’ve based our next year on. There will be six additional comedy productions at Symphony Hall next year, and I’ve got a new comedy series at CityStage.”

That season looks promising, with such proven successes as Annie, humor group the Capitol Steps, popular shows from Las Vegas, and the man who for many years defined entertainment, Bill Cosby, opening the season at Symphony Hall. In addition to that tried-and-true roster are some big names from the Great White Way, like The Wedding Singer, Le Grand Cirque, and the Tony Award-winning puppets of Avenue Q.

“We figured that, if people can’t go afford to go to New York to see a Broadway show,” Anzalotti said, “or they can’t afford to go to Boston to see a theatrical performance, perhaps if we provide it right here in our own community with a good ticket price, then they’ll see that they don’t have to go outside of the area.

“We’re just really reaching out to people this year,” she continued, “and we’re counting on having quality shows that they will want to see. But it’s like taking a dart and throwing it at a dartboard. You never really know what is going to sell and what won’t. Will Annie sell this year? We’ve done it four times, and it sells out every time. But I don’t know what the people will want to buy.”

In order to bring a new generation of theater fans into Symphony Hall, Anzalotti and crew looked to the stars from the NBC reality series Superstars of Dance. The winning team, Groovaloo, featuring hip-hop dance performers, is one of the headlining acts of the upcoming season.

Explaining the limitations of what can be brought to Springfield, Anzalotti looked to the competition just south, at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun. “We just can’t compete with them,” she said.

“People ask, ‘why don’t you bring Neil Diamond here, or something popular like that?’ Well, the fact is that they cost millions of dollars, and we simply can’t afford that. Mohegan Sun also blocks out performers for years. We’ve had a few performances booked here, but then they’ve grabbed them. Of course, they can afford to pay a performer a lot more than we can.”

Also, the practical realities of the 100-year-old Symphony Hall add their own additional challenges.

“It lacks a lot of the requirements for some popular shows,” according to Anzalotti. “There’s a lack of wing space, fly space, stage depth, and those are the reasons why we can’t do Miss Saigon, or Cats, Phantom … plays like that. They won’t fit into that space.”

Curtain Call

Overall, despite the numerous challenges of operating a nonprofit arts organization in the dark days of deep budget cuts, Anzalotti maintains her enthusiasm for the stages, and how they affect the city surrounding them.

With such a full calendar of events, for so many nights every year, it seems clear that the theaters can be one more link in the chain to bring quality nightlife back into downtown.

The economic impact of the nonprofit arts industry in America is enormous. Americans for the Arts is the largest nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the arts across the nation. A recent study it published with the Georgia Institute of Technology finds that spending for and by nonprofit arts organizations totals more than $160 billion every year.

Anzalotti sees her theaters as two turbo engines for the local economy. The New England Foundation for the Arts published its annual report, called CultureCount, this past December. It cited the SPADC as a mobilizing force for Springfield.

“That report said that our two venues generated more than $4.8 million to the downtown economy last year,” Anzalotti said, “which is huge for downtown.”

“We’re here, as a nonprofit, to serve downtown and the community at large,” she continued. “When a show does well here, downtown does well also. The restaurants are busy, bars, the parking garages … everyone sees the benefit of crowds at our venues. At Symphony Hall, on one night, we can employ up to 85 people. Our goal isn’t to make vast sums of money, it’s to break even and to bring business into downtown Springfield. People only have so much discretionary income these days. The big thing is that we all have to work together, to help each other. We can all benefit.”

Every time the curtain falls on those 250 nights downtown, rest assured that the impact will be felt by the audience, but also the city around that stage.