October 26, 2017

Allan Vella, President & CEO of the Fox Theatre spoke to members of the Atlanta Lions Club during their bimonthly luncheon meeting at the Downtown Capital City Club.  Allan is responsible for overseeing the Fox Theatre operation including programming for the facility.  The theatre averages 250 performances per year and hosts over 500,000 guests annually.  Allan shared a presentation of the Fox’s history going to back to its early days as a Shriner Temple before being purchased in the depression out of foreclosure.

Much of the lunch conversation centered on the financial impact on performance venues like the Fox should the Georgia legislature permit the Gaming Industry to operate in the state and directly compete with their casino performances.  Allan said Gaming Industry venues typically pay performing artists almost threefold market rates and lock artists into non-compete contracts which may financially impair theatres like the Fox.  A coalition of Atlanta’s largest performance venues – the Fox Theatre, the Woodruff Arts Center, the Cobb Energy Centre and others formed a group called the Georgia Arts and Venues Coalition to fight the entry of Gaming Industry performance venues.  The coalition does not want to fight casinos, only their performance venues with predatory economics.