Philip Sneed has announced his retirement as president and CEO of the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities effective next June 30, just as the organization turns 50. And because Sneed is known for being just about the most transparent leader of any arts organization in the state, I jokingly asked him why he’s getting out: Is it time? Or is the house on fire?

“Oh, it’s time,” Sneed said with a laugh. “We’ve certainly struggled, like others. But all things considered, things are pointed in the right direction, and I’m really proud of what we’ve accomplished.” 

Thanks largely to Fire Captain Sneed, who will be remembered for bringing stability in times of tumult over his 13-year tenure.

In 2016, Sneed oversaw the Arvada Center’s separation from the city of Arvada and its transition into an independent, nonprofit organization. That required a year-long reorganization and the establishment of a new cooperative agreement with Arvada, which still contributes about $5 million in operational and maintenance support.

Sneed, 66, also steered the Arvada Center through the existential crisis of the pandemic, which included the emergency whittling of the annual budget down to $8 million and, gradually, back up to its current $14.7 million. That’s about $3 million more than when Sneed took over in 2013, an increase of 36%.

The Arvada Center, which opened July 4, 1976, offers live theater, visual arts, music, dance and educational opportunities, drawing about 300,000 to its classes, plays, musicals, art galleries, outdoor concerts,  summer camps, field trips and outreach programs.

When the shutdown closed the Arvada Center in March 2020, Sneed and his team secured more than $6.2 million in federal pandemic assistance funds. That, he said, allowed the Center to maintain “almost full employment” and to produce ongoing virtual programming during the shutdown. But the real art of keeping the Arvada Center afloat kicked in once the federal pandemic money ran out.

“Like most others, we’ve been finding it hard to close the budget gap since then, but we’ve made some big changes in our model this year and instituted a number of major adjustments, which seem to be addressing the cash-flow problem,” Sneed said. “Our fiscal year only started on July 1, but the early signs are very, very good. So I think we’re going to be set up in good shape for my successor.”

Sneed cites a loud and proud third major accomplishment of his tenure, and that, he said, was the establishment of IDEA, an organization-wide, board-approved mandate that requires Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access to be “a primary factor” in all decision-making.

At a time when President Donald Trump is actively working to dismantle all federal DEI programs and policies and withhold funding from private organizations that do not do the same, Sneed is keeping his hand on the gas can.

Last year, the Arvada Center not only presented the award-winning play “The Laramie Project,” which explores the culture that surrounded the 1988 murder of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, Sneed marked the 25th anniversary of his killing by inviting Shepard’s parents to Arvada for two days of public conversations.

The Center also hosted events addressing controversial topics like the Israeli-Gaza war; the centennial of the 19^th Amendment and the 25^th anniversary of the FBI raid that closed the nearby Rocky Flats nuclear weapons manufacturing plant.

In the upcoming season, his theater division will be staging “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill,” a Billie Holiday retrospective.

The Arvada Center recently hosted a “Drag Queen Story Hour,” which invite families to listen to children’s stories that celebrate kindness and literacy. They were met out front by a mask-wearing group called the Patriot Front that was there to disrupt the event.

“We did not cancel the performance,” Sneed said.

“If there’s a real decision to be made that looks like lots of money is at stake, we’re going to have to cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said. “We can’t lose the organization. But we also have to stand up for as long as we possibly can and say, ‘We are not backing down in the face of this ridiculous pressure.’ In fact, we are looking for ways to advance the values of our IDEA program even further.”

Where’s the fire?

If there are any smoldering embers from the shutdown, the leading cause of it is a flatline in philanthropic giving, Sneed said.

“For the first five years after we separated from the city, we averaged about a 15% growth in contributed revenue from the private philanthropic sector outside of the city and SCFD,” he said. “But for the last two years, it’s been flat. So that’s where we’re most struggling.”

As a result, Sneed just made the painful decision to eliminate all of what he calls “non-mission-based programming.”

What that means is that, as of June 30, the Arvada Center is no longer an events center where businesses can hold conferences and families can host wedding receptions. The events department, which has been losing money for four years, has been eliminated.

“We had a really good team, and they did their best,” Sneed said. “But so many things have changed since we first started that line of business. There’s more competition in the marketplace. Personnel costs have gone up so much that we were never able to generate net revenue from that program.”

Maximizing the Arvada Center’s ballrooms for their highest and best use, he said, “would require a major investment in terms of a capital campaign. And the climate is not right for that right now.”

The upside to eliminating the events department, he said, is that it will save the Center “several hundred thousand dollars a year, and will open up new opportunities for mission-based humanities programming in those ballrooms.”

Sneed, who grew up across the street from the Arvada Center, earned his degree in theater from the University of Colorado Boulder and started his acting career at the Arvada Center before moving to California to earn his MFA in acting at the University of California San Diego. He was the Producing Artistic Director at The Foothill Theatre Company in Nevada City, Calif., before returning to his home state to run the Colorado Shakespeare Festival from 2007-13.

He is married to the recently retired resident costume designer Clare Henkel, and he is the father of Creede Repertory Theatre Artistic Director Emily Van Fleet.

The Arvada Center will soon launch a nationwide search led by a headhunting firm called Campbell & Co.