Chautauqua Institution President Thomas M. Becker's off-season letters to property owners provide updates on recent actions by the Board of Trustees as well as other issues impacting the Chautauqua community.

LETTER TO PROPERTY OWNERS — JUNE, 2011
Dear Property Owner,

In my letter to you last June, I focused on the key elements of the then newly adopted strategic initiatives of the Board of Trustees. While now 17 months from adoption, these initiatives continue to guide our work. I want to begin this update to you by revisiting the work of the trustees and how it has evidenced itself in our activities since the close of last season. As I noted last year, our new initiatives seek to realize more fully Chautauqua’s contribution to the marketplace of ideas and to lifelong education and its audience potential. To do so, the Trustees concluded the Institution should:

• More thoroughly integrate and explore the connections among Chautauqua’s distinctive mix of arts, education, religion and recreation
• Significantly expand the number of Chautauquans and their engagement in the mix, both on the grounds and off, during the season and after
• Create more, and deeper, exchanges among current Chautauquans and among those who, once made aware of Chautauqua, are likely to embrace it.

As I approached this most recent off-season, I was certain that for us to be successful we had to recognize two fundamental ideas. First, Chautauqua would not reach more people without a highly concerted effort to share our story. For too long we have assumed that people will just find their way to us. Second, if we are to convert more visitors into Chautauquans, we must deliver the entirety of the Chautauqua experience with a level of customer service beyond our past practices.

Fortunately, our financial performance last year and the two prior years provided us the opportunity to begin to invest in a number of initiatives identified as critical in the development of our strategic objectives. During 2010 we continued to manage our expenses prudently. Actual expenditures in 2010 were down 1.8 percent from 2009. While our earned revenue was essentially flat, the Chautauqua Fund exceeded its goal and finished 5.3 percent higher than 2009.

As a result of this financial performance, the Trustees continued to accelerate our investment in the Athenaeum Hotel over the winter. Again this year we have expended $500,000 of Institution capital on the renovation of a number of the rooms and the installation of a new elevator (the old elevator remains for those interested in historic relics). Since our plan for room renovations began in 2008, we have fully refurbished 23 of the Hotel’s 155 rooms.

Our investments at the Hotel recognize that many who come to the Institution for the first time are likely to come for less than one week and our primary housing option for such a stay is the Hotel. In addition to the physical improvements to the Hotel, we are paying extra attention to customer service in order to turn our first-time guests into repeat Chautauquans.

The Trustees have also authorized renovations to the Refectory. These are being undertaken as we continue to look at the delivery of food service on and around the Grounds. Interestingly, within four miles of the Institution there are 27 different options, including 12 that are located on the grounds. The changes at the Refectory this summer will allow for faster service and additional seating. A new menu will provide more health conscious options as well as the traditional selections. The Gazebo will now serve a small number of lunch items. As we focus on the delivery of experience of being at Chautauqua, we will continue to identify and respond as best as possible to the food service needs on the grounds. We will evaluate the changes made for this season during the summer through surveys of our customers and recognize that further investments will be required.

Our most significant investment coming out of the 2010 season has been our creation of a Vice President for Marketing position and the hiring of 20-year Chautauquan George Murphy to fill that position. We have written about George and many of his efforts, including the redesign of our website, the advances to our accommodations system, and changes at the Main Gate in the most recent Chautauquan as well as the Foundation’s newsletter Pillars. I shall not repeat those stories but refer you to them if you are interested in knowing more. I do want to share with you more of the rationale for my decision to move forward with this investment.

Our analysis of ticket information indicates that the number of people attending Chautauqua each summer has declined slightly since 2008 as it did in several years earlier in the decade. If we were to match the population of the grounds in 2000 (as measured in the number of days for which the population has purchased a ticket), we would have needed to sell an additional 2,100 one week tickets last summer.

Our ability to generate additional revenue over the past decade has been limited to increases in the Chautauqua Fund and increases in ticket prices. Much of the analysis introduced into our strategic planning regarding financial sustainability focused on the rate of growth in ticket prices. We recognize that if we are to increase revenue consistently while keeping price increases to inflationary levels, we must increase the volume of tickets sold. Consistent revenue growth and increased cash flow are critical to our funding of operational improvements and capital needs.

Our desire to expand the number of Chautauquans is not, of course, solely driven by finances. Many of you have heard me say that I believe Chautauqua is more important as a national asset today than at any time in our history. Ours is a time of enormous social strain, deep uncertainty and extremism played out on a small globe. Chautauqua and Chautauquans are urgently needed to bear witness to the continuing possibility of reasoned debate, to promote the power of the arts to lift our spirits, to encourage interfaith understanding and to remind ourselves and others of the essential value of reflection, recreation and restoration on our frenzied, multi-mediated lives. There is a need in our world for people who identify as Chautauquans.

Part of our effort to increase Chautauqua’s visibility among a wider swath of the population involves an increased presence within the space of social media. We have an increased Facebook and Twitter presence. For the first time, last weekend, we invited a group of 25 bloggers to visit the grounds to learn more about our program and to explore their willingness to “blog” during certain weeks related to topics of interest.

As you know, we believe that partnerships with other nationally prominent organizations also introduce us to new audiences while increasing our access to speakers who otherwise might be difficult for us to attract to Chautauqua. This summer’s partnership with the International Spy Museum during our week on American Intelligence (July 10-16) has confirmed these benefits. Because of our collaboration, we have been able to secure speakers who were unaware of Chautauqua prior to our invitation and, frankly, would have been very reluctant to accept our invitation without the prompting of our friends at the Spy Museum. Currently the sale of one week tickets for this week exceeds any other one week of the season.

Our collaboration with the Spy Museum has further allowed us to advance another important tenant of our strategic goals—to increase the opportunities for intergenerational experiences. As part of our Special Studies offerings during this week, we will offer a Family Spy workshop for children ages 8-13 who must be accompanied by a parent/grandparent or guardian. To further our intergenerational programming goals we have also added extra events to our Family Entertainment Series this summer and continue to expand the opportunities within our sailing, golf, tennis and fitness programs for multiple generations to participate as family or friends.

During this winter we have extended our collaboration with four organizations in Buffalo to our great benefit. As you all know, WNED-TV, our region’s primary public television station produced a film about Chautauqua which debuted in January across the nation and has re-aired on many stations since then. Arguably, no single activity that Chautauqua has ever undertaken has brought such attention to the Institution (perhaps also to be considered are the Soviet exchanges in the 1980s and the early years of the CLSC). Traffic on our website spiked considerably in the days and weeks after the film was broadcast and has continued to run ahead of prior years. Last week, WNED re-broadcast the film within its market (which has a large presence in Southern Ontario) and also provided us a half an hour of broadcast time to promote the upcoming season.

Last month, our theater company reprised Amadeus with the Virginia Symphony in Norfolk. The cast was made up entirely of CTC alumni, including former conservatory member Blake Segal, who took on the role of Mozart in the Amphitheater last summer and at Art Park with the Buffalo Philharmonic. The Virginia Symphony is conducted by JoAnn Falletta, who also serves as the music director of Buffalo’s orchestra. We are grateful to JoAnn for helping demonstrate to a new audience the quality of Chautauqua Theater Company.

This summer will be the first year of a three-year collaboration with the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo. Albright-Knox is one of the nation’s oldest and finest art institutions, and we are thrilled that we will have works on loan from it this season and in 2012 and 2013. This summer’s exhibition will include works by Jasper Johns, Milton Avery, Hans Hoffman, and Franz Kline. Our collaboration includes the opportunity for Chautauquans to spend a day in Buffalo touring the Albright-Knox, the Burchfield-Penney Art Center and the recently restored Darwin Martin House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

The collaboration with the Albright-Knox Gallery has been funded through a grant from the John R. Oishei Foundation as is the visit to Chautauqua this summer by the Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, former Congressman Jim Leach of Iowa. Oishei, the largest private foundation in western New York, shares our interest in creating a new tone of discourse in the discussion of public issues. Chairman Leach has been actively promoting civil discourse during his tenure at the Endowment. During the second week of the season, where our lecture theme is “Government and the Search for the Common Good,” Chairman Leach will participate in three different events where he will engage Chautauquans on the issue of civility and the tenor of our national discourse. This partnership serves us well as we seek to deepen your engagement with our speakers and significant issues. (I might add that we will also hear this summer from the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Rocco Landesman, during our week on the Case for the Arts.)

We are partnering again with The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and for the first time with the Smithsonian’s Museum of African American History and Culture on our week looking at “The Path to the Civil War” and we have already begun to work with our friends at National Geographic to extend our on-going partnership to a week in 2012 that will look at why “Water Matters.” Our work with them two years ago on the topic of exploration led to one of the most popular weeks ever. We hope to replicate a similar experience a year from now.

Core to our aspirations over these next several years is the creation of more and deeper exchanges among current Chautauquans, including our program participants. Our experience teaches us that for most of our speakers and guest artists to embrace fully Chautauqua, we needed to encourage them to be in our community for more than the 24 or 36 hours many spend. Thus one of our highest priorities has been to be able to offer our guests accommodations that would encourage such extended visits. Thanks to the generosity of Susie Hagen, that is now the case. The new Hagen-Wensley House is beautiful inside and out and appropriate for our community. With the warm hospitality provided by our hostess Rachel Borzilleri, bathrooms with modern plumbing, a library and business center for guests to work from, and the porches to enjoy the beauty of the Lake, we have a new set of opportunities to extend the presence of our guests into the community. There will be an open house for the public from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, June 25, before our first guests arrive, to allow you to tour the new facility.

Another change to the grounds this summer involves the relocation of the North Gate to the Turner Community Center. We are responding to the concerns expressed by many about the safety issues created by the turns through the parking lot. We hope this will further alleviate some traffic at the Main Gate while improving the overall access to the northern half of the Grounds. We are continuing to use the resources developed from the capital replacement service fee on land sales to reconstruct roads. Portions of Peck, Scott, and South Lake avenues will be rebuilt prior to the season. At the meeting of the Corporation in August, we will again provide a full report on the revenues and expenditures from the replacement fee.

We have received a Green Innovation Grant of $683,000 to cover half of our costs for the planning, design and construction of projects that affect storm water management focused on improving the overall health and vitality of Chautauqua Lake. One of the goals set forth in our strategic plan calls on the Institution to provide exemplary leadership regarding the environment. The awarding of this grant and the actions it allows are evidence of this leadership. Our implementation of our storm water management plan will be the first comprehensive action taken by any lakeside community on behalf of the lake.

I urge you to pay attention to the opportunities you will have this summer to hear from and provide input to two study groups that will report back to the Board of Trustees this fall. Each will be soliciting your ideas this season. One is the Amphitheater Study Group which is to explore the challenges to the existing structure due to the age, size, configuration, and demands of our current programming. The second study group is considering the philosophy of land use regulations on the grounds and how well we are being served by those regulations.

Apropos the work of the Architectural and Land Use Study Group, last month the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York unanimously upheld Chautauqua’s right to maintain, administer and enforce land use regulations. Over a year ago, a lawsuit was brought against the Institution that fundamentally challenged our governance model. The two courts that have considered the issues have ruled decisively on behalf of Chautauqua’s deed covenants and enforcement procedures.

There is much I could say about the 2011 Season. My colleagues and I believe it meets the highest standards for a Chautauqua summer season. I hope you will engage fully with all it has to offer. Don’t miss Pink Martini or Straight No Chaser. They may be unknown to you but both have huge followings around the country. Take advantage of the opportunity to introduce your children and grandchildren to opera by coming to the Amphitheater for Verdi’s Luisa Miller. This is one of those singular community experiences that can happen at few places other than Chautauqua. Take time to peruse the Special Studies catalog and sign up for a course. Try a new pursuit, be it yoga, golf or sailing. Watch a rehearsal. Get your tickets for the initial New Play Festival (supported by the Roe Green Foundation). Listen to Raphael Warnock and Tony Campolo and all our visiting theologians preach. Be amazed again by the talent of Alexander Gavrylyuk. Introduce yourself to the conductors who will lead the Symphony this summer and express your pride in the quality of our wonderful orchestra. The morning lecture program is populated with those who bring deep knowledge of their subject and a willingness to share it with you. There is so much more, I should never begin a paragraph such as this, because I hate to omit any aspect of our program. Please take advantage of all that is here for you.

Finally, once again, thank you for your investment in this Institution. Owning property at Chautauqua comes with a series of on-going obligations that extend way beyond your original investment. Yet, our property owner community contributed 44 percent of all the dollars given to the Chautauqua Fund in 2010. Your support and your advocacy have everything to do with Chautauqua’s success.

Our ambition is to deliver the Chautauqua experience at the highest quality to an increasing number of people who will embrace the core values of the Institution. In doing so, we will fulfill the great promise of Chautauqua in service to the enrichment of the human experience.

Jane and I look forward to seeing you very soon.

Thomas Becker
President