The Sedona Community Forum at Yavapai College has held two sessions to discuss the future of the Sedona Cultural Park, which the Sedona City Council purchased in November for around $24 million.

The first, on Jan. 25, featured Mayor Scott Jablow. The second, which took place on Wednesday, April 5, presented the park’s architects, Dan Jensvold and Stephen Thompson, who briefed participants on the park’s history and then took them on a tour of the amphitheater. The city has not yet held a meeting.

“I’m glad it’s becoming something for the community to talk about,” Osher Lifelong Learning Institute facilitator Paul Friedman said. “It’s a creative opportunity for the community.”

The presentation was accompanied by a display of dozens of blueprints and drawings, most of which had been filed away for two decades, that included everything from concept sketches for an early, conventional stage house to the final plans from Western Wood Structures for the Frontiere Pavilion’s unique triple arches.

For the Public Good

“It always was a public project,” Jensvold told the audience. “It was a community effort to pull people together … to get this property for the public good.”

“We wanted to not destroy the character of this place with a parking lot, with structures, with buildings,” Thompson said of their design approach. “Thus we had that minimalist structure that you see out there … It’s almost like nothing. And yet there’s a statement made there. It houses the heart of music, culture, art in this town.”

Jensvold explained how the Yavapai College Sedona Center building, which was part of the park’s master plan, was “designed to encompass nature and reach out to it, not just grade it out, put up a building. A lot of things in Sedona these days are going that direction.”

Thompson also recalled the referendum the park’s original board had requested due to public controversy over the proposal.

“The majority ruled,” he said. “They ruled for it. All of a sudden, people started liking the idea, especially when the music came up … They were all here, and they loved it. Nobody was talking about ever opposing it … It embodied our self-image as an arts community.”

With regard to the one-time proposal that the building that now houses Yavapai College could become city hall, Thompson asked the audience to speculate about what effect that might have on public debate: “Can you imagine in a thriving arts complex, in an arts community, city hall going on?”

Park Failure

Several questions from the audience dealt with the reasons for the Cultural Park’s initial failure in spite of its great popularity.

“It wasn’t what we spent on this,” Thompson said. “This initial phase that we developed was put together for a couple million dollars.” Instead, he emphasized the role that organizational problems within Sedona Cultural Park Inc., had played in its collapse.

“I always say a 28-member board doesn’t get anything done,” Thompson noted. He added that with CEOs constantly retiring and moving to Sedona while others were moving out of Sedona, the composition of the park’s board had changed frequently, interfering with its functionality. Then there had been problems with the arrival of retirees from the eastern U.S., who, Thompson remembered, had often claimed that promoting or advertising the arts would adulterate them, an attitude that had hindered the park’s success.

Chris Seymour, who had served on the Cultural Park’s original board at the time of the land swap with the U.S. Forest Service, was among the audience. Seymour discussed how a lack of sponsorship had been another problem for the park and how he had attempted to secure major corporate sponsors, such as Arizona Public Service, for the venue.

“Since the Sedona Cultural Park was a membership organization, they wanted to wait and see how the membership for the Sedona Cultural Park was going to grow,” Seymour said. “They sort of had in their mind what amount of members would behoove them to be able to put marketing dollars in there for their marketing purposes. And I don’t think the board in the late ’90s put enough effort into expanding that membership.”

Jensvold commented that the park’s lack of professional management further contributed to its problems.

“We were thinking big,” Thompson said. “Whether it was a little too early, Sedona wasn’t ready, people weren’t ponying up as benefactors the way we thought … Dan and I, I think, spent five years with no fees trying to keep this thing alive.”

“We’re still doing it,” Jensvold said. “The potential is still here.”

“I begged the city to buy this back in those days for $5 million,” Thompson said. “Nobody wanted to touch it.”

One attendee asked about noise complaints.

“The city required us to place monitors on the property lines on the neighborhood sides,” Thompson said. “Seventy decibels max. We never exceeded it.”

A member of the audience asked about the city’s plans and whether they had reached out to Thompson and Jensvold.

“No, they have not,” Thompson said.

“We’re here to defend it and I guess promote it, but we’re on the outside just like anyone else,” Jensvold said. “We sent a letter to Andy Dickey, public works director, and didn’t get a response.”

“They’re waiting to see if there’s a groundswell,” Thompson said.

Thompson v. Thompson

Former Sedona City Councilman Jon Thompson, who voted in November for the city to buy the Cultural Park as one of his final acts on council — he lost a reelection bid in August — said the city purchased the park out of expediency.

“No one decided to buy the property so we could fill it up with low-income housing,” Jon Thompson said. “We bought it because we had a problem with housing. This was an opportunity that presented itself … we didn’t have to think any further than that.”

“It’s not that people are going off and making subversive decisions that no one’s going to be brought in on,” he said, claiming that “the public is going to be very much involved.”

“Is it fiscally responsible to spend $20 million on that when you’ve got a hundred acres down the road?” Stephen Thompson asked, referring to city’s property at the Dells, adding that the city can’t make people choose to live in Sedona if they can find cheaper rents elsewhere.

Jon Thompson objected to building Dells housing, stating it wold alienate part of the city’s population and hinder the development of a sense of community, and argued that the city will figure out the appropriate rental rates for the housing that it builds to attract the right number of people to Sedona.

“I think it’s a gamble, and you can’t lay a potential cultural development to waste on that prospect,” Stephen Thompson said. “I think we can mix it. I think there’s an opportunity to do it all.”

Jon Thompson predicted the final decision on the Cultural Park’s redevelopment will involve “some amazing combination of housing and retail and cultural things.”

He also talked about buying his own property near the park in the mid-1990s and being told about the future amphitheater by the Realtor: “And we said, ‘That’s not a downside.’ The idea for us to be able to walk to cultural things — that sealed the deal.”

The Workers in the Dells

“We’re looking at maybe doing another pro bono master plan for the Dells site,” Jensvold told the audience. “We’ve got a hundred acres down there. Much easier place to build units and the shuttle goes right by it back and forth. We can tuck that back in away from the road so you really wouldn’t see it, much like we did with the amphitheater. Those are fantastic lots over there. That would be nice housing.”

“It’s a balancing act,” Jensvold continued. “There’s a way to do it other than destroying what we have here. What are you going to do, get rid of it? No, you spend a few more bucks, rejuvenate it, and instead of Cottonwood being the center of entertainment in the Verde Valley, it comes back to Sedona.”

Field Trip

Gasps and exclamations were the audience’s first reaction to looking out at the Frontiere Pavilion from the top of the amphitheater as Jensvold and Thompson took them on a tour of the Cultural Park following their presentation. As the forum’s participants explored the bowl itself, they began to speculate about picnics there, or watching sunsets, even the love-in at Elysian Park in Los Angeles.

Marianne Thomas related a story about her daughter-in-law, who grew up in Flagstaff: “When I told her about this meeting, she said, ‘I came down in high school and watched a concert there, and I said to myself, I want to live in Sedona when I grow up, because this is the kind of community I want to raise my child in, and live in.’”

Thomas pointed out the opportunity offered by the timing of the Cultural Park’s purchase, with “so many younger families moving in … We need this right now. Plus, if all of this is here, it keeps the traffic from going all the way in.”

“I think there’s going to be a really big voice once people have the opportunity,” Thomas added.

“We had four wonderful years when this was up and running,” Chris Seymour remembered.

“What happened here, to me, is the story of Sedona,” Laurie Seymour said. “I’d like to see it all back together. I’d like to see it the way it was.”

Chris Seymour suggested crowdfunding the restoration and giving out tickets to the first concerts as prizes. “Sometimes people are like, ‘I just want to be part of that,’” he said.

“We could just clear it out, clean up the stage and start doing benefits here,” Thompson suggested.

“Bring a generator and a bunch of beer?” Marc Jacobson said. “I like the idea. I know some people.”

“It is not a derelict facility,” Jensvold said. “We could open this thing up again, and just have a smaller event here in a couple weeks.”

Riley Hilbert’s original petition to save the Cultural Park can still be read and signed at Change.org. Hilbert has also set up Facebook and Instagram pages for those interested in organizing to revive the park as a performance venue.