If you meet the new executive director of Hoyt Sherman Place and want to engage him in conversation, it won’t be a difficult task. 

You can talk sports. He’s a runner, swimmer, triathlon participant and an avid fan of the Green Bay Packers. (Ask him why he bought one share of stock in the iconic pro football team.) 

You can talk arts to him. His degree is in performing arts and he worked as a singer in New York City for a couple of years, but he loves and follows all kinds of art (he tells a reporter while the ‘70s rock band Foghat is doing a soundcheck for their concert later that night in the auditorium down the hall).

If you like history, he’s happy to jump into that topic. His career has taken him to places and jobs where he’s been able to observe some modern history. While in New York City, he worked for Beverly Sills at the opera company at Lincoln Center. During his brief stint in the Army, he worked in the basement of the White House, decoding messages during the last year of the Reagan administration and the first year of George H.W. Bush’s administration. Later while working for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., he had watched from the terrace at his office the terrorist attack on the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

Architecture? He curates the historic Hoyt Sherman Place, originally the 1877 mansion of prominent pioneer businessman Hoyt Sherman, expanded to add an art gallery and theater. While working in Hartford, Conn. he restored and refurnished a historic home just a few blocks from Mark Twain’s home and one of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s.

Kids and education? He raised two sons as a single dad and has directed two cities’ programs to infuse K-12 classrooms with the arts. Furthermore, as the only person in his family to go to college, he doesn’t believe it is a coincidence that only he among his three siblings had an arts-infused curriculum at his school.

Want to talk business? Warren has turned around two small-city community theater companies, including one that restored the Regent Theater in Cedar Falls. “I’m a very entrepreneurial, artistic person. I put practical business sense to the artistic model, and it works,”  he said.

What attracted you to Des Moines and this job?
After I finished up with Hartford Performs, I wrote out everything I loved about my favorite jobs. I love historic theaters. I love being able to be a catalyst in the community. I sort of have a penchant for taking underutilized facilities and making them blossom, so that was my criteria. (I love) professional entertainment, and if it didn’t have an existing education component, having the facilities to be able to do that. A headhunter I was working with said you should look at the League of Historic Theaters’ website. There’s something coming up you might be interested in, and sure enough, it was this posting for Hoyt Sherman Place. I called a couple colleagues who had connections with Iowa, and they raved about Des Moines and raved about the arts scene. I came out for three days over Labor Day weekend, and I came back in mid-September. Everything (the interviewers here) wanted to hear, I had done. Or some problems they talked about, I had fixes for. … I got a phone call four hours after the interview, and they said: “Have you left town?… Can you meet us for cocktails and discuss a way to get you here?” You just know sometimes when it’s the right fit.

Do you work for VenuWorks or Hoyt Sherman?
VenuWorks is the employer of all eight of us here at Hoyt Sherman. They are a management company that has expertise in all areas of entertainment and management. They’re one of two private management firms that really come in and provide a layer of support. The Hoyt Sherman Place Foundation controls the management company contract. The foundation gets the support from VenuWorks and a lot of cost savings. (VenuWorks) does all the human resources stuff for us so we don’t have to have an HR person on staff. They do some marketing support. They work with some of the agents, so they can send one person to the booking conference in New York rather than Hoyt Sherman paying to send someone.

What exactly do you manage here at Hoyt Sherman?
The whole ball of wax. I’m the official curator for the museum and the mansion. VenuWorks has absolute responsibility for maintaining and protecting the building and the artwork and all of the contents and increasing the use of the building to make it financially viable. There is a nice endowment, part of which they used to renovate the theater to get it to the point where everybody who comes here wants to come back. It is a spectacular listening room. 

What are your plans as you settle into the job?
From my history in the business, I know that most financial successes come when the organization has a little bit of risk. So, we’re going to do a little bit more self-promoting of events. I have contacts with agents that I’ve worked with before, so rather than having a middleman all of the time, on a few select projects to start with, we will be the promoter. A larger percent will come back to Hoyt Sherman Place. The foundation put the first $50,000 into (an angel fund to cover the risk), and the idea is to grow that fund as we do more shows. As a promoter, you take more risk, but you get more profit. We’re going to be very, very cautious until we’ve got three or four really successful shows under the belt. Then, from that same fund, I can’t wait to bring in, for example, 55-minute shows designed for school-aged kids that come with a pre-planned study guide and prep materials for the teachers and follow-up after the fact….to expand the education piece. Also, and I sort of coined this phrase of “putting your facility on the relevance radar.” Hoyt Sherman Place is here. It’s beautiful, but most of the people that I, as a newcomer, ask about Hoyt Sherman Place say, “Oh yeah, I went there for a dance recital in fourth grade.” So, just becoming relevant again. (I want to) partner with the Civic Center and other organizations. There’s a lot of smaller theater companies that are growing by leaps and bounds. Being able to partner with them: “We have a special rate for nonprofits, why don’t you try to build your audience base by coming here once a year? We’ll help.” We’re trying to rebrand the image — Hoyt Sherman Place, we’re a hot ticket. The more art you have in a community, the better it is. You just build this cultural, tourism climate of activity. Everything else about Des Moines is already in the top three or five in the country.

How are you trying to get to know the community?
I have a list of about 50 must-meet people, and I’m about 25 names into it. We put out some press releases (about my hiring) and had a few people reach out. The board knows everybody in town, so those personal introductions are helpful. And I’m a firm believer in valuing the stakeholders. My first week here was the annual opening ceremony for the Women’s Club — 127 years — and they asked me if I would speak for five minutes. … so now I’m an official member at the Women’s Club. There’s no gender bias. I get lots of attention at the lunches.

Long-term plans?
I would like to see this place have a festival or an open house, a three-day weekend of just snippets of all the different arts groups in town. I call it my big hairy audacious goal — to be in a financial position to be the host of a Des Moines arts festival where … it’s open and we rotate what’s happening on stage, juxtaposed with a presentation in the gallery, and offset with a tour of the mansion. All day long. It sort of frosts my cupcake to know that there are probably people in Des Moines who have never been in here. Big picture, our endowment is a great endowment, but in this day and age, a $4 million endowment could evaporate quickly. So to reverse the trend of using a percentage of the endowment for maintaining or running the facility and to put money back into it, so it is more of a rainy-day fund than having to rely upon it.  I would love the building to be open from 7 a.m. to midnight seven days a week. Whether it’s hosting the chamber of commerce or Kiwanis for coffee in the morning. The more people who are here, we’re putting ourselves back on their radar, that this is a really cool place. I’m also a big believer in not sacrificing the art. If you have a symphony that’s written for 40 instruments, don’t do it with 20 and sell it for the same price. Find somewhere else to make the savings…..When arts organizations cut on programming, that’s when it starts to slide.

Impressions of Greater Des Moines?
I’m impressed of the revitalization downtown. When I was in Cedar Falls 20 years ago and I came to Des Moines, I don’t remember any of it looking like this. I don’t remember the pedestrian-friendly approaches to the Capitol or the East Village or the (Principal) Riverwalk. I walked it again last weekend, all the way up the pagoda and over that bridge. It’s a renaissance; from the Events Center to the Civic Center, there’s a lot to do. The fact that people are still supporting so many arts organizations is a good sign.