On the cusp of the its fifth anniversary, longtime Miamian Lewis “Mike” Eidson took the helm of the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Art’s private-sector board, which in recent years has gone from being perceived, he said, as a liability to an asset.
For the past three years he’s served as chair-elect of the board under immediate past Chair J. Ricky Arriola.
During that time, the center brought in a new CEO, opened Barton G.’s Prelude restaurant and revamped its culinary offerings. It’s also paid off big chunks of debt thanks to Adrienne Arsht’s $30 million gift and started programs like Rock Odyssey, which brought 25,000 Miami-Dade fifth graders to the center to see performances.
And though many now lavish praise on downtown’s main cultural hub, Mr. Eidson didn’t seem at all complacent.
His biggest goals for his three-year tenure are to grow the center’s endowment, which now sits with $10 million, to see the center export home grown talent and to possibly bring dramatic theater to an offsite facility run by the Arsht Center.
“One of the things that I believe that the center should do is theater and when I mean theater I mean non-musicals, classical theater, Shakespeare, A Street Car Name Desire, that sort of thing,” he said. “I think if you look at all the performing arts center, the great performing arts centers, they have a drama capacity.”
And like other great performing arts centers around the country Mr. Eidson said he’d like to find more people in the community to buy into the center’s long-term success and potential economic impact on downtown Miami.
He was interviewed in the Sanford and Dolores Ziff Ballet Opera House by Miami Today staff writer Zachary S. Fagenson