See a related column by Mary Anna Towler.

When Renaissance Square died in late July, the drama surrounding plans for a performing-arts theater had just begun. Almost immediately, leaders of the Rochester Broadway Theatre League began looking for a new site, and they're now being courted by officials and developers in five suburbs - and by the City of Rochester.

The suburbanites are eager suitors. For at least two of the sites - Anthony Costello's development in Brighton and LakeRidge Centre (formerly known as Medley Centre and, originally, as Irondequoit Mall) - a big theater drawing thousands of people for every show could be a godsend, virtually guaranteeing demand for restaurants and other amenities.

It's by no means certain that RBTL will be able to build a new theater. RBTL is quoting a cost estimate of $40 million to $50 million, and it had raised very little toward construction of the Ren Square theater.

RBTL officials continue to insist that they can raise the money they need, in part through selling naming rights and "inventive bonding." But RBTL will likely need substantial public funding, and some critics have objected to spending any public money on a theater. If RBTL leaders think Rochester can support a new theater, those critics say, let them raise the money privately.

Critics have insisted that RBTL should stay at the architecturally valuable Auditorium Theatre. RBTL leaders insist that to do so will threaten their ability to attract quality touring shows. There's no air conditioning, there are no elevators, backstage space is cramped, and so are the dressing rooms. Parking space is limited and the lobby isn't big enough. The pit band area is so small that last year for "Jersey Boys," many of the musicians had to perform in a basement room under the stage, their music piped into the theater.

A big, particularly controversial issue: RBTL leaders insist that the theater itself is too small. They want a theater with 3,000 seats, and it's impossible to expand the Aud. Critics - some of them researching the size of theaters across the country - say the Aud's 2,400 seats are plenty.

Until mid-November, Mayor Bob Duffy was siding with the critics. RBTL ought to be able to find a way to renovate the Auditorium Theatre and stay put, he said. But after a study commissioned by the city said that renovating the Aud would be too expensive, Duffy jumped into the new-theater site competition and asked RBTL to consider the Midtown site. He added a qualifier, though: if RBTL can raise enough money to build a new home.

The RBTL's site-selection committee will begin reviewing the proposals early next month - it may bring some of the presenters back to answer questions.

Despite Duffy's change of heart about the Aud, critics' skepticism and criticism are likely to continue, particularly if the city wins the site competition. And yet public apathy is one of the things that killed Ren Square. RBTL will need to create enthusiasm and public support if it is to get public and private funding for a new building.

In a recent interview, RBTL board chair Arnold Rothschild and Albert Nocciolino, the producer who books the touring Broadway shows into Rochester, talked about the Auditorium Theatre, funding, and Rochester's position in the competition for shows.

Rothschild has been pushing for a new theater for RBTL for a dozen years, long before Ren Square was conceived. More than anyone, he is the public face of RBTL. Nocciolino has his own company, and he works with RBTL to program, package, and market each season of shows at the Aud. Nocciolino also raises funds for and produces Broadway shows - he won a couple of Tonys and is a Tony voter -so he has those relationships, which help with booking road shows.

"Albert is our competitive advantage," Rothschild says.

The following is an edited version of the interview with Rothschild and Nocciolino.

CITY: What are the limitations of the Auditorium Theatre?

Nocciolino: Let's start with the capacity, which seems to be something everybody's focused on. We don't have to go very far from Rochester to look at what is the norm: Buffalo - 3,000 seats; Schenectady - 2,800 and change; Landmark in Syracuse - 2,900 seats. These are the three theaters in New York State that do full-week engagements or more.

So let's take this theater. You have 500 seats less than the average size here in New York State. The legit week, as we call it, is Tuesday through Sunday: eight performances. If you multiply eight times 400 or 500 - the difference between the other capacities - you're talking about two extra performances in all of those other theaters. We're paying the same price for the show here as we do there. The same number of trucks show up there as show up here. So what does that mean? It means that we don't have the ability to generate the grosses that the other theaters do.

When you're looking at big shows - by big shows, I mean the blockbusters, the shows that come in for multiple-week engagements - normally they go where the grosses are potentially the highest. So, for instance, "Mary Poppins" next season is in Buffalo for three weeks. I won't have "Mary Poppins" here until 18 months later. They're going to play the markets where they can generate the higher grosses. They're spending millions and millions of dollars producing these shows. They want the opportunity to, what we call in our business, "reach overages." After all the expenses are paid, money's left over that can go toward the amortization of the capitalization. It is the business of show business we are in.

Part of the experience that's absent here is coming to the theater just to come to the theater, not necessarily just for the show: embracing the theater. If I take you to Shea's next week in Buffalo, you'll see a lobby that's a city block long. You'll see six restaurants, all full. You can park your car, you can go to a restaurant, you can go to a bar. You can't do that here.

That's part of the experience that you can generate with the proper facility, with the kind of amenities that exist both within the theater and surrounding the theater.

Which is more important: the number of seats or a new theater?

Nocciolino: They go hand in hand. You wouldn't build a new theater today without more seats. It makes no sense to build a new theater where you can't provide the economics necessary to stay competitive in the industry.

Rothschild: The other part of it is, Rochester's a great theater town, better than other towns he's talked about. But absent more capacity, with the cost of staging shows going up, the ticket price would continue to go up disproportionately. And that excludes people that we're trying to include.

Nocciolino: At the moment, my prices are somewhere between $3 to $5 more per ticket here than in Buffalo because I don't have the seats.

Shea's has 600 more seats than the Auditorium. But we had "Jersey Boys" last year and they've got it this year. If we're not as competitive as Buffalo....

Nocciolino: There's a lot of different parts to that. One is geography. One is availability of theater. When you start trying to find a three-week window in one theater versus another, and one is closer to Toronto - sometimes producers have a little more sensitivity to when they want to play Buffalo. They'll play Rochester if a show's in Toronto.

Basically, if you look at a two-year window you'll see the same shows in each market. We both have "Chicago." We both have "Cirque Dreams." We both have "Grease." And "Wicked." This year they've got "In the Heights"; next year we'll have "In the Heights."

Are you sure you can fill 3,000 seats here?

Nocciolino: I'm positive we can. There are two equations. One is they come to the show, the other is they come to the theater and the show. We sold out "Wicked." We sold out "Jersey Boys." They came to the show. When you have "Chicago" and "Spring Awakenings" and those shows, you need the rest of the equation.

Why can't RBTL renovate and expand the Auditorium and get 3,000 seats into it?

Nocciolino: I'm not an architect, I'm not an engineer. I've been told that it's almost impossible, and I know one thing that doesn't work: if adding seats means adding another balcony, you might as well just not do it, because nobody's going to sit up there.

Rothschild: [LeChase Construction's analysis says that] the only way to add that capacity was to raise the roof of this venue 20 feet and build another balcony. There's no way to do it in width, and there's no way to do it in depth. One of the real problems with the lobby is depth.

One of the problems with this venue is that as our core gets older, it's difficult for them to walk to the theater. We have no ramp parking, we have no parking access - especially in the winter. It's very common with big shows that the lobby fills up and we can't let more people in, and they stand outside because we can't seat them because they're still testing the show. And you'll see senior citizens standing outside. There were just some inherent difficulties with an older venue.

The business has changed and people's expectations of what happens when they go out for the evening has changed. That really is underscored with seniors. Walking from behind that Armory is dangerous for them with ice and snow. And we don't control that; we don't control any of the parking.

Nocciolino: There are some realities here, and no differently than any other business, you work with what you have. You try to make the best of it, and we have. This is a Mason's theater; this was not built as a performing arts center. Syracuse and Schenectady were built as performing arts centers. They have the space, they have the lobbies, they have the amenities.

What have we lost say in the past two years, that we're not going to get at all, because of capacity?

Nocciolino: We haven't lost anything. We're getting them later, and with that come the potential risks: that a show's not as hot, or the show's no longer on Broadway. For instance, "In the Heights" is in Buffalo in February. We'll have it here the following year. By the time we get it here, it'll have closed on Broadway. It's still playing on Broadway while it's playing in Buffalo.

Rothschild: You brought "Phantom" here before anyplace else. Almost a third of the tickets were sold outside of the five-county metropolitan area. People came from the Southern Tier, they came from Buffalo, they came from Syracuse. Actually, the Pantages Theater[in Toronto], wasn't even operating at capacity in that period of time because we were taking a lot of the market.

If you waited two extra years, and it went to Buffalo and it went to Syracuse, what would the overall market have been? So you don't necessarily lose the product, you lose the impact. We wouldn't have six weeks and we wouldn't have a third of people coming into the town. What we want to try to be is the first town that someone wants to go to. We don't want to lose product east or west.

Nocciolino: By the way, it's not just theater. I was in Syracuse yesterday morning, Landmark Theatre, 2,900 seats, they have Robin Williams. Buffalo has Robin Williams. He's not playing here. They have 500 to 600 more seats. He's going to go where he can generate - he can pick any city in America.

That's why - it's strictly the capacity?

Nocciolino: Absolutely. It's got nothing to do with me or my business.

Well, we've got Bill Cosby coming.

Nocciolino: Well Cosby, that doesn't cost anywhere near as much as Robin Williams.

This is where we were gentle and careful. The month of December is wonderful here: Mannheim, Jim Brickman, Cosby, Kenny Rogers. But there are certain shows that just will only go where there's capacity.

Some critics say we shouldn't spend public money on something that takes money away from the area. When the RPO plays here, the musicians live here and so the money we pay them stays here. But when a Broadway show leaves, a good part of what people pay for tickets is leaving with it. How do you answer that, because it gets then to the idea of public expenditure for a new theater?

Rothschild: The model you just mentioned, you'd never bring in any entertainment to town. Entertainers don't all live in Rochester. You'd never bring professional baseball to town, because those players don't live here. These are economic engines.

What we bring to the party, and the reason it's a good use of public dollars, is the economic impact. For every $1 in tickets sales, there's about $4 in economic impact in the community. People go out to dinner and they buy clothes because they're going to the theater and they go out for dessert after. When Nocciolino brings a lot of his product in, you can't get into a restaurant until after people have left to go to the theater.

Nocciolino: We will spend, between stagehands, wardrobe, and musicians [during "Chicago"] $80,000 to $90,000, all local people. They [the "Chicago" cast and crew] will use 600 or 700 hotel room nights, and that's a small company. They'll all have breakfast, lunch, and dinner somewhere.

What's going to happen with the Auditorium Theatre?

Rothschild: There's always going to be a place for this theater. In every community that builds a new performing arts center, there's an old theater. And the way it works well is for an entity to be charged with the responsibility of booking both. That way you're constantly focused on things that fit. With the exception of the fact that the building's not air-conditioned, so it eliminates our ability to use it through the summer, I think that when you free up the dates that we currently occupy here with Broadway, there's a ton of other events - less-produced kinds of things that sell 1,500 in capacity - that this will get used for. It's a great 1,500-seat theater, and it relieves the parking issue and the lobby problems.

You'd have to do some renovations and downsize substantially.

Rothschild: There are 1,500 seats on the ground floor. A lot of our problems in the venue deal with the fact that there's no elevator. If you're handicapped, trying to go upstairs... there are no restrooms on the main floor.

The $40 million to $50 million cost you're giving for a new theater is much lower than the estimates for the Ren Square theater. Why?

Rothschild: When you have to demolish and prepare a site in the middle of downtown, construction is decidedly more expensive. When you start getting into excavation, you have no idea what you're going to run into. I think that a lot of that expense that you were hearing specific to that site presupposed a big asbestos problem. There was an unknown in terms of what was underneath the site. Everybody that's come to the table [for a new theater] has come without any site acquisition costs, with all of the infrastructure built out.

The other part of it is you don't need to build the same kind of structure. What you have to do in a downtown has to fit it into the design of whatever is the downtown, where with some standalone structure someplace, you might not build as grand an exterior.

Why does the city have to come forward and propose something? Why can't RBTL say "You know, we really would love to have a piece of, say, the Midtown plot?" Why can't you propose to the city?

Rothschild: We said we're going to open the process to people that wanted the performing arts center. I think we have been really transparent in our process. This was not a stalking horse for the city site. All of these developers have spent a significant amount of money and time to develop plans and we have to be very above-board.

One thing we need to know is that everybody's going to be pulling on the oars to get this done. This can't be one of those "O.K., we give you the site, you raise the money." Everybody's going to have to work collaboratively, which was the downfall of the other project: too many different agenda items.

How are you going to pay for a new theater?

Rothschild: A lot of that depends on where. I can't get into specifics of what we've been told so far, but I can tell you that the developer involvement has been substantial. A lot of the math will be specific to the site. You sell naming rights. You do perhaps some inventive bonding process. It's going to be a mix-and-match kind of thing, depending on the site. When we had the presentation from Finger Lakes, for example, they brought in the economic development folks from the Finger Lakes region who felt they could get New York State tourism dollars and do some other things.

If you build it in the city, where you wouldn't have a big-name developer with a large-scale project, you would have to come up with the money yourself, one way or another. Are you thinking about government funding when the state of New York is in such wonderful shape?

Rothschild: If I read Assemblyman Morelle's quote correctly, he said there would not be any state money unless it was built downtown. So I assume that meant that if we did build downtown, there might be some state money.

I want to come back to the tax credit. The state has created some programs where if, for example, you give $1 million to a project you get $1.5 million in New York State tax credits. So big companies acquire these things to cut down their corporate liability. The sale of tax credits is very common. The reason that becomes important is all the jurisdictions have to agree. So the city, the county, everybody would have to be pulling on the oars.

There are a lot of very inventive kinds of approaches to this to fund it. The key is we're not going to get anything done unless everybody involved this time is really focused on getting it done.