Rock hall ready for key transition

By GLENN GAMBOA

June 15, 2000 Web posted at: 12:33 PM EDT (1633 GMT)

CLEVELAND, Ohio (The Akron Beacon Journal) -- The next phase of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum's development starts today.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

``We were a start-up business, and now we're transitioning,'' said Terry Stewart, the museum's executive director and chief executive, who will usher in the new start at the museum's annual meeting today. ``It will be great to do that with a bunch of folks who are very excited about being here. The board now (has) people who love the music and who understand how critical the rock hall is to the area's resurgence.''

The museum is at a crossroads.

Its financial results for 1999, which Stewart plans to announce at the meeting, reflect that. It is a mixed bag of news that reflected the museum's declining attendance and lower earnings, as well as its success at reining in expenses.

Despite a 7 percent drop in attendance to about 512,000, the Cleveland museum was able to more than double its net income in 1999 through serious cuts of about 19 percent of its 1998 budget.

That level of cost-cutting cannot continue in any organization. And Stewart said it will not continue at the rock hall this year.

``We had the luxury last year of looking at a whole lot of accounts and determining how effectively the money was being spent,'' Stewart said.

Museum officials are confident that attendance declines are leveling off, as declines at most museums do after five years. Even with the drop, the rock hall continues to be the most popular hall of fame in the country, and the $100 million in tourists' money that it brings to Northeast Ohio makes it a major part of the area's economy.

Today's meeting will be the first gathering of the museum's restructured and downsized museum board -- with 34 members instead of 50, and 13 new members. Museum officials say the turnover was necessary to reflect the change in the mission of the board, which was formed to get the hall built in Cleveland. The board's new mission, under new co-chairman Jay Henderson, managing partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers' Cleveland office, will center on future growth, including a planned expansion.

That growth will come through increased fund raising.

After those improvements (a possible restaurant, stage, archives and other draws for music fans) are in place, Stewart hopes attendance at the museum will again climb.

``We really see the attendance issue as something we expected,'' he said. ``We understand it, and we believe we can take care of it with more fund raising.''

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