Mt. Crested Butte Performing Arts Center gets new name

“If you’re the president of an organization, sometimes it’s just time to lead”

The proposed Mt. Crested Butte Performing Arts Center MCBPAC will now be known as the Biery – Witt Performing Arts Center at Mt. Crested Butte—after the organization’s co-president, Tom Biery and board member Paul Witt stepped up with the donation needed to name the facility.

The details of the donation are still being worked out, although according to fundraising literature it would take $1.5 million to name the performance hall. So for the moment, MCBPAC staff are calling it “a generous gift to secure the naming rights.”
“If you’re the president of an organization, sometimes it’s just time to lead. It’s more than just talking it. Sometimes you’ve got to stand up and show people that this is for real and it’s a project worthy of support,” Biery said. “I think that’s really why Paul and I wanted to do it.”
The Mt. Crested Butte Performing Arts Center organization’s co-president, Tom Seymour, made the announcement at the Crested Butte Music Festival’s fundraising gala on July 20.
Biery was previously the president of the Crested Butte Music Festival as it started its meteoric rise onto the stage with top-tier music festivals around the country. He says his original interest in the proposed performing arts center was purely in how it could improve the music festival. And for the music festival’s growth to continue, the musicians need a new venue.
Then, as he saw more of the proposal, and the partners it had attracted in the town of Mt. Crested Butte (which has pledged $6 million in bond financing) and Crested Butte Mountain Resort (which offered up land and cash), Biery felt compelled to support it.
While Biery’s wife, Linda, has served on the music festival board for the last 14 years almost since the event’s inception, after four years as the music festival president, Biery stepped down to help lead the effort to build the performing arts center.
He says that along with a desire to lead, his family and Witt’s family “want to do something that is really positive for the community and will have a lasting impact. We’re trying to look out into the future, 20 to 25 years into the future and beyond, at what type of facilities this community is going to need and I think we have an opportunity right now to accomplish that goal.”
On the way to a $23 million fundraising goal, the effort has already earned $15 million in pledges and is hoping to cap off a $3 million community challenge campaign this summer.
If $3 million can be raised in the greater Crested Butte community, a group of donors will match the $3 million in donations. Already the community has collected more than $1 million toward this summer’s goal, including a “significant pledge from Crested Butte Mountain Resort,” according to a MCBPAC press release.
If the community challenge campaign is successful, it will bring the project’s total funding to $17 million, enough for architects and designers to make a final plan and start construction as early as 2015.
And for Biery, the funding would change the face of the arts locally and allow local performances and performers to reach their full potential.
“My vision is a more sustainable year-round economy that bridges shoulder seasons and allows restaurateurs and all the local businesses to make money. The festival is venue limited in a big way in many respects and I think the PAC will be a part of that,” Biery says. “But artistically, I see continued growth in the arts community, which will in my view generate even greater tourism and economic development here.”
And to show their support for the project, the artists are making a financial contribution of their own. According to the press release, the music festival’s director, Alexander Schierle, will personally match a collection that has been taken up by the musicians who attend.
“It’s a love for the organization, a love for music and a desire to see that grow and improve,” Biery says.