8437: National Black Theater Not In The Black.

From The New York Times…

A Harlem Cultural Hub Is Threatened by Debt

By Kevin Flynn and Felicia R. Lee

Theirs was a partnership built on vision and pride and rooted in a building at the very heart of black America.

In 2002 the National Black Theater, a cultural anchor of Harlem, invited the owners of Nubian Heritage, a growing beauty-care company with an African pedigree, to invest in its sprawling building at Fifth Avenue and 125th Street.

The theater, created in the turmoil of the civil rights movement, had owned the building for 19 years. But now it faced foreclosure, as large construction loans remained unpaid.
For the theater, its new partners held the promise of revenue and revival. For the businessmen, two former street vendors from Liberia, the building provided a flagship store in a historic neighborhood.

Nine years later, though, the store is closed; the partnership owes nearly $1.8 million in unpaid property taxes; and the theater is facing foreclosure yet again, a plight it blames on its partners, men it once embraced as kindred spirits and now in court accuses of mismanagement and fraud.

“This debt has placed the theater’s home at risk like nothing else ever has,” said Raymond N. Hannigan, the theater’s lawyer.

Founded in 1968 by Barbara Ann Teer, the theater was created to showcase productions by, and about, black Americans at a time when such stories rarely appeared on the mainstream stage. It has evolved into a cultural spawning ground, one that presents shows and workshops intended to foster respect for African ancestry and for black self-expression, and one graced over the years by artists like Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Nina Simone, Nikki Giovanni and Maya Angelou.

But the theater’s story is also a cautionary tale about what can happen when arts groups extend beyond their comfort zone to find revenue, as is increasingly popular in the poorly financed arts world. Ms. Teer was a pathfinder in such efforts. From the day in 1983 when she bought the building, a former jewelry factory, she hoped to finance her work with rent from the other tenants. “The real estate subsidizes the art,” she liked to say.

The men Ms. Teer later picked to be her lead partners in that effort, Richelieu Dennis and Nyema Tubman, began their careers on 125th Street, peddling organic shea-butter soaps, much like the ones Mr. Dennis’s grandmother once sold at village markets in Africa. Today they operate several companies on Long Island that make skin and hair care products derived from African ingredients, which they market online and through major retailers like Target. Dun & Bradstreet estimated that the primary company has $6 million in annual gross sales.

“My whole life has been about building community, building business in our community, empowering people in our community,” Mr. Dennis said.

Read the full story here.