Broadway Boom Could Come To Frisco As It Teams With Prosper ISD On $340M Arts Facility
A slate of Broadway shows could bring dollars and people to Frisco if a planned partnership between the city and Prosper Independent School District moves forward.
The collaboration would result in the construction of the $340M Frisco Center for the Arts and the creation of a Broadway Frisco series for the facility, with assistance from Broadway Across America and Broadway Dallas.
The proposed Frisco Arts Center would feature a 2,800-seat performance hall for touring Broadway and community productions as well as a 300-plus-seat community hall for Prosper ISD and local organizations, according to a city press release.
Frisco officials have estimated the center could have an annual economic impact of up to $60M.
The center would be located among the 7 square miles of Prosper ISD inside Frisco’s northern city limits, which includes the area from just east of the Omni PGA Frisco Resort to Custer Road. An exact location for the facility hasn't been announced.
“The City of Frisco has envisioned a performing arts hall for two decades,” Frisco Mayor Jeff Cheney said in a statement. “Ultimately, the decision to participate will be up to Frisco voters if the proposed project, Frisco Center for the Arts, is placed on a ballot by the City Council in 2025.”
PISD plans to contribute $100M from its 2023 Performing Arts Center bond funds, while Frisco could use $160M in public funding if city voters approve the proposed bond, the Dallas Business Journal reported. Frisco officials are also considering philanthropic and private funding for the project.
Officials said during a Frisco City Council meeting in September that arts centers in Austin, Lubbock, North Carolina and Utah were built with a third of their funding coming from fundraising initiatives and the rest from public contributions, according to the DBJ.
“We want to have a successful business plan, and that is why we're talking to Broadway,” Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Tammy Meinershagen said during the Sept. 17 meeting. “Broadway makes the business plan work. Honestly, if they don't … want to be a partner with us, we have to rethink this because it will operate in the red forever.”
Frisco has been working toward getting its own performing arts center for years. In 2015, city voters approved a performing arts facility bond item, Community Impact reported. Following a 2018 feasibility study, city officials decided to put the plan on hold in hopes of finding a private partner to help build the facility.
With dozens of site visits to other cities’ performing arts centers under their belts, Cheney said the council members learned the price tag for such a facility always sounds like an impossible, “astronomical number.”
“And now the dollars seem almost silly and [the cities] see how it transformed their entire communities,” Cheney said during the Sept. 17 meeting. “It's an ‘if you build it, they will come’-type proposal.”
If the facility is ultimately approved, it would join other high-profile projects in development in Frisco.
City officials approved a $113.4M incentive agreement and a development agreement last month for the $3B The Mix project at the corner of Lebanon Road and the Dallas North Tollway. The city also approved $182M in improvements to the city-owned Toyota Stadium in September that will turn it into the centerpiece of a mixed-use sports and entertainment district.
