I commend the Board and Triarc+Last Architect for the presentation that established the theater, and an expanded fitness center would fit on the Mountainview site and would cost about $32M to build. I am very encouraged by President Tom Foster sharpening of the pencil comment as we should stick to our budget even if it means each group is getting much less than these “Christmas shoppers” put on their list. I am having some difficulty understanding how TRIARC can say that the 27,000 square foot theater building will cost only $12M to build. I believe Sun City West built a theater 1/3 that size for about $10M years ago. In addition, I am bothered that the Board did not provide or use actual Mountainview auditorium usage data and did not disclose to the membership the “projected usage figures” that Connie Joe Richtmyer provided to TRIARC. Admittedly, my antennas are up and getting a signal. I am also a math nerd, so I took a deeper dive into the numbers and for me they just don’t make sense. I believe the presentation shows 80% of the building square footage relates to the theater. It was my understanding from the presentation that the only other areas touched by the base case program are the fitness area, the parking lot, pool decking, pool accessibility and pool equipment. How much do these cost? Let’s say $3M for non-building related items. So, if the total cost relating to buildings is $29M ($32M - $3M) and 80% of the square footage is for the theater space, the theater would cost about $23M if every building cost the same to build and equip. I learned through the SAC a theater costs much more per square foot to build than other buildings. The accountant in me desperately wants to audit these cost estimates because I would also like to know why the actual usage figures of the auditorium were not shown. I have them for 2022 and they show that the auditorium is used about 35% of the available time and the production of three plays by the Players Club accounts for 68% of that total. In the spirit of transparency, the members should be shown the secret CJR projected use of the theater and who will be responsible for making sure any added programming will be available. One man’s opinion.
Two things that concern me. First, we were told during the SAC process, that we could not build between the tennis courts and the auditorium. There is an easement here with the utility companies that can not be changed or built over. That's what we were told. The current drawing shows the theater using this space. Did something change? Second, we were told a theater costs aprox. $1200 a sqft. The 10k sqft theater quote was for $12.9 M. Now, it is half that. Did prices go down that much in two years? Were we given bad intelligence then, or now?
