Along with his boyish seems to be and broad grin, Ty Sutton, the brand new president and CEO of the Broward Heart for the Performing Arts, is the primary to confess that he’s achieved a lot already in his profession and has but to show 50. At 49, Sutton has been a CEO or govt director working the enterprise of performing arts for practically 20 years.
“It occurred very younger for me. And so, , after I give it some thought, I’ve been kind of a fixture in my profession,” says Sutton. He’s not solely been a fixture, however he’s additionally been a fixer.
“I’ve run 4 main performing arts facilities now – in Colorado, Texas, Indiana and Ohio, and all of these jobs have been coming to unravel an issue.”
However when he took over the reins of the Broward Heart and its affiliated venues in February, Sutton knew he was inheriting a spot that had already been by its fixing.
Kelley Shandling had helmed the performing arts heart for 25 years since 2009 earlier than he retired in 2024. Below Shandling, the Broward Heart mounted its monumental capital enlargement undertaking, “ENCORE! Constructing Group by the Arts” in 2011. Greater than $60 million was raised to improve the power to a state-of-the-art efficiency venue primed for the long run.
“Kelley was an important chief and so was Mark Nerenhausen [Broward Center’s CEO from 1998 to 2009] earlier than him,” Sutton says. “I knew each of them very properly.”
“I got here in right here and not using a mandate,” Sutton says. To place all of it in context, he brings up the Broward Heart’s historical past.
“Again in 1987, folks weren’t constructing performing arts facilities like this one. And a gaggle of individuals right here for a decade earlier than had stated, ‘We’d like tradition. We’re not Miami. We’d like this.’ Buddy [Robert B.] Lochrie was certainly one of them.”
Lochrie, who handed away in 2009, was the founding chairman of the Broward Performing Arts Basis in 1985 and was instrumental in getting the required personal funding to construct the middle and create an endowment.
“, they went out locally, and so they made guarantees, and so they fulfilled all these guarantees. However one factor that hasn’t occurred and that they didn’t management was this space across the constructing, which is now going by a large redevelopment,” Sutton says.
One of many concepts he repeats often through the interview, looking on the picturesque view from the Mary N. Porter Riverview Ballroom, is the notion of the prime spot on which the Broward Heart is positioned alongside the New River.
“I might simply like to see us actually create this space as a thriving arts and tradition district,” he says. He talks concerning the cultural establishments close to Riverwalk: the NSU Artwork Museum, the Museum of Discovery and Science and Esplanade Park, a frequent location for outside performances. “It’s simply a chance to create,” he says.
Sutton additionally oversees the Broward Heart’s affiliate venues, together with the long-lasting The Parker, previously referred to as the Parker Playhouse, which received a $30 million facelift accomplished in 2021, spearheaded by the Broward Performing Arts Basis. Additionally below the Broward Heart umbrella is the Rose and Alfred Miniaci Performing Arts Heart on the campus of Nova Southeastern College and the Aventura Arts and Cultural Heart.
When the lights are up in any respect 4 venues, 30 exhibits can occur in per week, says Sutton.
“, it’s fascinating. Nationally, should you discuss to folks within the performing arts, it’s not Miami, it’s Broward. And folks know the Broward Heart as a result of we have now two of the busiest theaters within the nation – the Au Rene right here on the Broward Heart and The Parker.”
SELF RELIANT
There’s a enterprise mannequin that the Broward Heart runs on, too, which is completely different than the opposite giant performing arts heart to its south, Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Heart, and the other of most different performing arts facilities across the nation.
“We’re not financed by authorities, so we have now to carry out like a enterprise,” he says. Cash from Broward County’s cultural division sometimes represents solely about 1 to 2 p.c of funding.
“Authorities funding doesn’t issue into any of our programming,” says Sutton, so when Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed funding to all arts organizations throughout the state in June, it had nearly no affect on Broward County’s performing arts facilities. “We’re a $65 million funds and we get $150,000 from the state, if we’re fortunate.”
Sutton talks the numbers just like the CEO of a multi-million enterprise. “We’re about 85 p.c earned income and about 15 p.c contributed — quite a lot of that’s from foundations and particular person donors.”
He arrived on the Broward Heart with a stellar fame and his personal accolades. Throughout his six years as president and CEO of Dayton Reside in Dayton, Ohio, 5 venues have been below the Dayton Reside model, together with opening the PNC Arts Annex and the Dayton Reside Inventive Academy, a performing arts training heart. Earlier than that, he was govt director of the Butler Arts Heart at Butler College in Indianapolis; led the Wagner Noel Performing Arts Heart in Midland, Texas; and managed an $8.2 million renovation on the Lincoln Heart for the Performing Arts in Fort Collins, Colorado, which shut down for a yr throughout its main overhaul.
A COLLEGE HOBBY
The profession trajectory to the highest of the performing arts venue enterprise began off as a interest in faculty. Sutton grew up in San Francisco, then headed to the College of Utah in Salt Lake Metropolis – “an enormous college, 30,000 folks.” He majored in political science. “I assumed I used to be going to do legislation or finance. I knew lots of people within the finance world.”
After which, he says, he began engaged on the faculty’s live performance committee. “It was for the scholar authorities, and I had grown up within the arts. I sang all by highschool, however I knew it was by no means a profession, it was simply one thing I loved, being in several choirs.”
He recollects that it was the mid-Nineties and as faculty college students do, those that had dedicated to placing on the exhibits began dropping out. “We had some huge cash I may spend and as folks bailed, I simply stored reserving artists.”
He had tenacity and he began calling folks and received to know managers who have been saying, ‘Hey, you’ve got actual cash, and you’ll pay.’’’
The subsequent factor he knew he had booked Dave Matthews of the Dave Matthews Band and Tim Reynolds, member of TR3. He began working for promoters in Salt Lake Metropolis. “I actually began studying the enterprise.” He did get his diploma in political science from the college and met his now spouse, Polly, there.
“She was ending her grasp’s diploma, and I used to be working there.” After being a profitable live performance promoter, the college employed him to do their programming. “We met within the arts.”
Polly danced with the Utah Ballet on the College of Utah Faculty of Dance, professionally with Charleston Ballet Theatre, the Anaheim Ballet, American Folks Ballet and has been on the dance schools at Brigham Younger College and Butler College. Because the couple and their two kids moved to South Florida, she is having fun with time as a Pilates teacher for Membership Pilates Studios at a number of Broward County areas.
As he continued to achieve success within the live performance selling enterprise, Sutton says, “I by no means thought it was my profession. It was all the time, properly, I’ll do that for some time as a result of it’s enjoyable after which I’ll go do finance or get an actual grown-up job.”
Then the grown-up job got here – he labored for the 2002 Salt Lake Olympic and Paralympic Video games and was finally employed by the Nationwide Hockey League’s Anaheim Geese.
WHAT LIES AHEAD
Now, with Fort Lauderdale at his toes, Sutton says he’s wanting a long time down the highway at what the Broward Heart could possibly be. “What can we should be locally?” And he understands some hurdles such because the personal improvement occurring downtown. “Yow will discover frequent floor with personal builders, and I’ve constructed loads in my profession, so I get the place they’re coming from. However I feel if we will lead by way of persevering with to inform our story higher about what the experiences we provide imply to folks, then builders need in on that – they need to understand how they construct on that.”
His imaginative and prescient for the Broward Heart is that it’s the epicenter of an important arts and leisure district. “I feel if all of us actually lean into that with streetscapes and beautification and walkability and eating places and all of the issues that, properly, that we don’t have proper now, I feel that’s precisely the place we could be. However we nonetheless have to remain targeted on how we proceed to make it worthwhile for folks to come back right here, to maintain making the expertise higher and higher.”
His years working in sports activities honed his technique in what it takes to excel within the C-suite of a performing arts heart. “It’s the identical as sports activities. You must put out a profitable product for folks to need to come, proper?”
