Construction of Bell LightBox, the new five-storey home of the Toronto International Film Festival, is proceeding smoothly at its site on King Street West.
Behind the scenes, though, the atmosphere might be described as one of quiet urgency, anxiety even.
Sure, Bell LightBox, under construction since April, 2007, will be a reality sooner rather than later, but under what circumstances?
Slated to serve TIFF36 in the fall of 2011, the project is still $49-million short of the $196-million pegged as the goal of its capital/endowment campaign. Private-sector funding, it seems, has dried up along with the economy.
In the meantime, colorectal cancer has forced David Pecaut, the organizational brains behind Luminato and Toronto City Summit Alliance, to resign June 9 as chair of the LightBox Campaign Committee - a position he'd held only since late March.
Mr. Pecaut still intends to help with fundraising, TIFF insiders say, while his wife, Trillium Foundation chair Helen Burstyn, has joined the board.
Certainly there is considerable government money out there for the plucking, especially federal funds. The Tories have previously shown largesse with Luminato and agreed in 2006 to provide $25-million to the TIFF capital campaign. Also, it's well-known that Mr. Pecaut has cordial relations with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, who's also the minister responsible for the Toronto region.
However, TIFF has no immediate plans to name Mr. Pecaut's successor. "We're pausing," said Jennifer Bell, TIFF's vice-president of communications. "The group is saying, 'Okay, what do we want to do in terms of the existing campaign team and if we want to augment those efforts?' "
The festival is keen to ensure that LightBox is debt-free when its doors open. "Servicing debt means less money for annual operations and initiatives," one long-time TIFF supporter noted this week, adding that after a business opens, it is more difficult to raise money, especially money that will be used to service debt.
If there is $39-million or $49-million in debt on opening day, LightBox artistic director Noah Cowan "is going to have to work very hard to turn the LightBox into a cash machine" to drive down that debt, a TIFF board member said.
Charging higher membership fees to its Cinematheque programs, for example, or securing a plethora of third-party rentals, such as multi-year commitments from some of the 70 or 80 other film festivals Toronto hosts each year to fill its 1,375 seats, are possible options.
At the same time, TIFF has benefited from reportedly receiving a "low-interest infrastructure loan" from Infrastructure Ontario in 2008, a reliable source said this week. TIFF officials would not provide details of the loan, but last year the McGuinty government agreed to classify TIFF as a "not-for-profit arts training facility," allowing it to tap into an entity called the Ontario Strategic Infrastructure Financing Authority loan program.
It wasn't supposed to be this tricky. TIFF, after all, enjoys a huge international profile. When it announced its intention to build more than six years ago, it expected to raise more than $70-million by the end of 2003, with construction starting in 2005.
Alas, success can't pay all the bills.
