Wells Fargo Center’s changing identity

Well Fargo Center’s nearly nine-minute promotional video (shown at the end of this article), hosted by actress Rita Moreno and produced to mark last year’s 30th anniversary, deals with the big names in the first 30 seconds or so, then moves on.

Most of the video deals with the center’s community and educational programs — staging family shows, sending visiting artists into local classrooms, providing teachers with arts resources that supplement their regular curriculum and even supplying instruments to music students in need.

The cast of Roustabout Theaters "Legally Blonde" practices at the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa. Fifty young thespians, ages 11-20, attend the six week summer camp in it's 6th year. (John Burgess/PD)

Roustabout Theater, WFC’s resident stage company, is a training program for aspiring young actors.

Once the only game in town, Wells Fargo Center now faces competition from the new Green Music Center at Sonoma State University, and the newish Uptown Theatre in Napa, which books acts that have played Wells Fargo Center in the past.

With a current annual operating budget of $10 million, the center earns almost half its income from ticket sales. The rest comes from private and corporate donations, grants and sponsorships, from leasing some of the center’s space to schools or churches, and from renting out space for special events.

The Wells Fargo bank bought the naming rights to the center in 2005 for $3.75 million, and that 10-year contract ends in 2015.

WFC can provide a showcase for famous talent, but that’s not all it does, Nowlin stressed. This is not a new stance for him. In 2009, he wrote an article for the North Bay Business Journal with the headline, “Wells Fargo Center is about much more than big playbills.”