Slow April ticket sales for City Opera House
TRAVERSE CITY -- This year has brought many changes to the Traverse City Opera House. First, the opera house partnered with Michigan State University's Wharton Center. Then a series of layoffs were made to help financially. Now employees say business has slowed down.
It's been three months since Kristi Dockter took over as the Director of Operations and Marketing for the City Opera House. She says most of her day is spent working on her vision for the historic downtown venue.
Kristi Dockter says, "What we're really trying to do is put together programming that encompasses a little bit of everything folk, classical, and comedy instead of one type all the time."
Since she took over in January the City Opera House sold out five shows, but April is a different story.
Dockter says, “We came off these runs of fabulous shows, and we've hit the spring break wall."
All three shows on the April calendar have dozens of open seats. The news has some downtown restaurants concerned because when the opera house is busy, it creates business for them too.
Pangea's Manager, Susan McCormick says, "Sales are great we usually get a lot of business before hand. We do really well."
Dockter says she is reaching out to the community and networking regionally so that the box office goes from quiet to booming again.
