November 15, 2016 – Steve Bedard, Director and CFO of the Gaillard Center, spoke to our club about the Center’s recent redevelopment and the various outreach programs it offers. Mr. Bedard graduated from the Naval Academy and worked for the Department of the Navy, where he earned the 6th highest naval award, the Legion of Merit. After serving for a number of years with the City of Charleston as the CFO, he was asked to oversee the $145M renovation of the complex, originally envisioned in 1963 by then Mayor Palmer Gaillard. The original center opened in 1968 and contained 2,700 seats and a 15,000 sf exhibit hall.
In 2009, in partnership with Nashville’s Martha Ingram, the City of Charleston decided to undertake a major overhaul of the facility. As chair of Spoleto and observing that other local fine arts facilities had been renovated Ms. Ingram donated $71M towards the renovation. The original budget was $101M that grew to $145M. Renovations were completed in 2015 and resulted in a state of the art performance hall capable of seating 1,800. It was the City’s largest public-private partnership.
The Gaillard started off doing well financially, but began to run in to difficulties. In June of 2015 Mr. Bedard was both the CFO for the City of Charleston and the CFO of the Gaillard. He eventually left the City to concentrate of leading the Gaillard. At that time the Gaillard was $700k in the hole when he arrived. He recognized there were three options to run the facility. The City could manage the programs itself, but he didn’t think this was the proper method of management. The City could “contract” management to an outside entity like the North Charleston Performing Arts Center is done. But he decided that the best approach was to establish a non-profit to run the facility because it could take private donations. Through hard work and reorganization they have reduced the debt down to $180M in the first year and they are currently on track to make a profit. Mr. Bedard plans on staying for three years.
The Gaillard complex is more than the performance hall. The facility includes 60,000 sf of office space and the City of Charleston Emergency Operations Center. The Gaillard Performance Hall Foundation operates the performance hall, while Mr. Bedard runs the Charleston Gaillard Management Association and is responsible for the financial success of the facility. He believes there are three major objectives for the Gaillard.
- Proper stewardship of the space
- Develop a customer-centric team with a “can-do” attitude
- Provide high quality and varied programming with reasonable ticket pricing structure
The Gaillard has strong community outreach programs, which bring in students for educational shows. They recently served over 4,500 kids in an anti-bullying performance.
So far this year they have reached over 25,000 children in various community programs.
— Steve Coe, Keyway Committee