{"id":37319,"date":"2025-12-04T15:53:30","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T20:53:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=37319"},"modified":"2025-12-04T15:53:38","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T20:53:38","slug":"aurora-town-square-will-report-on-successes-challenges-twice-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-town-square-will-report-on-successes-challenges-twice-a-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora Town Square will report on successes, challenges twice a year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Aurora Town Square will mark the second anniversary of its completion in 2026 and, as they look to the future, they will now report to Council twice annually on their successes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Council considered an update to the Aurora Town Square (ATS) business plan last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While there were many successes to report, local lawmakers requested more regular reports to Council on their financial results, bookings, programming outcomes and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs Aurora\u2019s population continues to grow, so too has interest and participation in arts and cultural events,\u201d said Phil Rose, Manager of Cultural Services. \u201cRecent national indicators show that while the GDP of Canada\u2019s cultural sector grew modestly by 0.2 per cent in early 2025, there is a notable increase in engagement with visual and applied arts, reflecting a shift toward more immersive and relevant cultural experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLocally, Aurora has seen a steady expansion in cultural and community programming. ATS presents a timely and strategic opportunity to meet the diversifying cultural interests of Aurora and the broader York Region. It is well-positioned to leverage the public\u2019s favourable perception of culture and the evolving philanthropic landscape to drive meaningful community impact.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurora\u2019s cultural landscape is \u201cthriving,\u201d said Rose in his report, noting that thus far in 2025, the Town has hosted more than 50 cultural, heritage, and recreational experiences at Town Square. At the same time, however, he noted Town Square will still be in its \u201cramp-up period\u201d for three to five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given the five-year \u201cramp-up period,\u201d Ward 2 Councillor Rachel Gilliland questioned the revenue benchmarks set by Aurora Town Square to \u201cavoid\u201d a further impact on the tax levy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLooking at 2026 in particular, we have a series of revenue targets related to ticket sales, programming and rentals,\u201d said Rose. \u201cIn terms of rentals and staff recoveries, the one caveat I would mention is that the way that we put the budget together last time was this sort of a budget that aggregated everything, including maintenance fees or maintenance and facility costs, business support costs, customer service, marketing communications\u2026. We have a target of about $300,000 for rentals and staff recoveries. This year, our target was $260,000 and we\u2019ve more or less reached that. We still have a few more rentals between now and the end of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNext year we\u2019re looking at $314,000 in staff recoveries [and] we\u2019re looking at about $200,000 in ticket sales. That\u2019s a combination of programming and ticket sales for performances.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

60% of expenditures, he added, go towards salaries, but they have been \u201call-hands on deck\u201d this year using existing staff to do their own front-of-house work for programs to stay within budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis year, because we’ve been in Year One, we’ve been able to really be cautious of our expenditures as the revenue grows. We’ve been quite good in making sure that we haven’t fully spent all of the\u2026expenditure lines as we’ve ramped up,\u201d Rose continued. \u201cWe\u2019re kind of hitting our stride a little bit now and figured out, I think, now what resonates with the community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Responding to Rose\u2019s answers, Councillor Gilliland said everybody wants to \u201cfeel comfortable\u201d with the expectations moving forward and put a motion on the table to have regular reports coming back to Council. While Councillor Gilliland suggested annually, a friendly amendment put forward by Ward 4 Councillor Michael Thompson and approved by Council upped the frequency to twice a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so new and we\u2019re still trying to drive the business model,\u201d said Councillor Thompson. \u201cI\u2019m happy to support [an annual report] but I just find that an annual report, you\u2019re really looking back and it\u2019s too late to change anything. If, for whatever reason, bookings aren\u2019t where we want it to be, or if there\u2019s some issues, if it at least comes every six months then Council may choose to take a more direct approach to be able to assist and drive what we hope is a very successful year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report before Council was \u201cfulsome,\u201d said Ward 1 Councillor Ron Weese, who added he felt it showed Town Square staff had their \u201cfinger on the pulse\u201d of the community, but questioned when they envisioned the ATS model becoming self-sustainable, profitable, and able to break-even.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBreak-even is not likely \u2013 a cultural facility like this, the amount of staff, the amount of things that are happening, we\u2019ve done this through all the different performing arts centres and similar cultural facilities throughout York Region, and we\u2019re happy to provide that information, but they\u2019re subsidized or, in some cases, highly subsidized by the community,\u201d replied Rose. \u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s ever the vision. Right now, we\u2019re working on the net operating budget of $1.07 million. I think as we scale up, I think\u2026 our plan is that we will begin to see more rentals, we will begin to see more ticket sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been very cautious as well in terms of the accessibility of the performances we\u2019ve put on, so the ticket prices are quite low. We want it to continue to be accessible for the community. We\u2019ll try to keep them low, but we\u2019ll also increase them to make sure we\u2019re keeping pace at least with inflation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNobody expects a business like this to get right off the mark in one year, two years, even three years, but I just wanted to ask the question because I know the public is asking these kinds of questions and, from my standpoint, I think you\u2019ve done a fantastic job in there and filling the place and there\u2019s a lot of excitement in it,\u201d said Councillor Weese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora Town Square will mark the second anniversary of its completion in 2026 and, as they look to the future, they will now report to Council twice annually on their successes. Council considered an update to the Aurora Town Square (ATS) business plan last week. While there were many successes to report, local lawmakers requested […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9HV","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-16 11:09:14","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37320,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37319\/revisions\/37320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}