Much of the attention on Tuesday’s election is focused on a controversial bond initiative that eventually would replace the Denver Coliseum with a $210 million, 10,000-seat concert arena at the National Western Complex.
But Denver arts advocates also have their eyes peeled on Referred Question 2A, which would, among other things, dedicate $30 million to the restoration and reopening of the iconic May Bonfils Stanton Theater on the former Loretto Heights College campus in southwest Denver. It’s part of a $450 million bond package spread over five ballot questions that would benefit 88 area cultural organizations, libraries and youth facilities — all without raising taxes. (Although the city could increase taxes at some point to pay them back).
The May Bonfils Stanton Center of Performing Arts opened to great fanfare in 1963. At the time, the 72-acre hilltop campus at 3001 S. Federal Blvd. was home to Loretto Heights, Colorado’s only all-women’s liberal-arts college. The theater’s namesake was the daughter of rags-to-riches Denver Post owner Frederick Bonfils, whose two famously feuding heiresses, May and Helen, spent their adult lifetimes one-upping each other with grand philanthropic gestures that have largely shaped the city of Denver. Both, no doubt, would find it bitterly ironic that Referred Question 2A benefits projects that invoke both of their names, as the measure also includes improvements to the Helen Bonfils Theatre Complex at the Denver Performing Arts Complex.
May’s theater, built for $1.6 million (about $13 million in today’s dollars) opened with a student production of “The King & I” in May 1963. In a special section to celebrate the opening, The Denver Catholic Register said the theater “is considered to be the most professionally equipped in the Rocky Mountain area,” and that its opening constituted “another giant step forward in Catholic higher education in the Great West.” At 1,000 seats, it was for decades Denver’s second-largest indoor theater, behind only the Denver Auditorium Theatre.
Loretto Heights began admitting men in the early 1970s and eventually grew into one of the leading undergraduate programs in the country for theater majors. The college helped steer many graduates to national prominence, including the late Francis Ruivivar, who played The Engineer in a Broadway production of “Chess”; Lise Simms of the Disney Channel’s “Phil of the Future,” and soap-opera star Staci Greason (“Days of Our Lives”). Local theater stalwarts have included Wayne Kennedy, Nick Sugar, Melissa Lucero McCarl, Michael R. Duran, siblings Paul and Annie Dwyer, the late Lucy Roucis and dozens more.
“When you consider all of the talent and passion that was put onto that stage over all those years, it’s really wonderful to think that will now continue and get more dreams started,” Paul Dwyer said.
After closing in 1989, the college became Teikyo Loretto Heights University, then Colorado Heights University before shuttering in 2016. Since then, the theater has been used mostly for graduation ceremonies, dances, recitals and conferences. The final public performance there was a free concert by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra in 2018.
That event was part of Denver Councilman Kevin Flynn’s ongoing effort to preserve the theater as the land around it is redeveloped by Westside Investment Partners — the Glendale-based home builders who bought the campus in 2018 for $16.5 million. (Westside is also embroiled in the much bigger controversy over the fate of Park Hill Golf Course.)
As part of the sales agreement, the developer has agreed to protect the theater and a few other campus landmarks from demolition. Westside plans mixed-use housing, office space and entertainment on the surrounding land — pending the outcome of the election.
“It would break my heart to see all of this be condos,” said Flynn, who has represented southwest Denver since 2015. “It is my singular goal right now to make sure this building gets revitalized as a theater.” And if it is, he added, that would be a win for everyone.
“The arts enrich any community, and this community in southwest Denver has been completely underserved and overlooked when it comes to the arts,” Flynn said of a neighborhood that identifies as 38% Hispanic and a neglected theater Historic Denver calls “the largest cultural asset in southwest Denver.” “This is a great opportunity to enrich their lives,” Flynn said.
Westside will donate the land and the building back to the city if the bond issue passes. Plans call for the theater to be operated by the city’s department of Arts & Venues — the same group that programs Red Rocks, the Denver Performing Arts Complex and more. There is a second, smaller theater that also will be restored and available for rental if the measure passes.
“While the facility is in need of critical infrastructure repair, equipment upgrades and disability compliance, the theater itself has great bones,” Executive Director Ginger White-Brunetti said.
Flynn envisions arts organizations from all over the metro area using the facility as a home base. “There is an overwhelming demand from smaller performing-arts groups that would never have a shot at booking, say, the Buell Theatre or the Ellie Caulkins Opera House,” Flynn said. “They can all have a home here. I think this is a real opportunity to foster growth in the performing arts in our community.”
A fully functioning May Bonfils Stanton Theater also would help fill a major gap in mid-sized performing facilities in the metro area. There just aren’t many available spaces in the 1,000-seat range. That size is considered the sweet spot, for example, for national touring productions of non-musical plays — which the Denver Center does not have. “I would love it if the Denver Center sees this as a facility it can use to diversify its audiences and bring them new content,” White-Brunetti said.
The fate of the May Bonfils Stanton Theater is personal to many who remember being there, onstage or in the audience. It’s personal for the people in the Harvey Park South area. It’s personal for me.
Loretto Heights’ graduates also include my mother, Florence Connors, who was likewise destined to a career in journalism but in college was featured in a 1953 Loretto Heights production of “Babes in Toyland” that featured Hollywood stars Mae Clarke and eventual Oscar nominee Ann Blythe. My mom said performing helped her conquer stage fright and become a better public speaker.
It’s personal for Flynn, too. The former Rocky Mountain News reporter-turned-councilman has had a lifelong love for the arts. He’s been a choir director for 53 years, most recently for the Mother Cabrini Shrine on Lookout Mountain. He grew up in musical theater outside of South Jersey, starring both as Winthrop in “The Music Man” and Randolph in “Bye Bye Birdie” — at age 10. “Theater really made me come out of my shell as a kid,” said Flynn, “and that’s what we want to do for kids in southwest Denver.”
But even if the measure passes, Flynn said, an additional $10 million will need to be privately raised to complete the project. And on that score, he’s got an offer for you.
“I pledge either to act in the first show staged in the new theater,” Flynn said, “or I pledge to refrain from acting in the first show, depending on who is the highest bidder.”
Denver Gazette contributing arts columnist John Moore is an award-winning journalist who was named one of the 10 most influential theater critics by American Theatre Magazine. He is now producing independent journalism as part of his own company, Moore Media.