"... according to a recent University of Chicago study of arts centers built from 1994 to 2008, more than 80 percent of the construction projects studied ran over budget, some by as much as 200 percent. And the new facilities often faced lower-than-expected attendance and revenue, and higher-than-expected costs due to overly optimistic projections of audience size, earned income and donations for both construction and operations and unrealistic forecasts of economic impact on the surrounding neighborhood.
As a result, many performing arts centers experienced a great deal of financial instability — deficits, staff cuts, hours and days of operations reduced, and ticket price increases." -Mary Carpenter in her LTE to the News & Record
You can see the study Ms Carpenter is referring to in Set In Stone by the Cultural Policy Center of the University of Chicago.
And remember: That was before the economic downturn when folks had lots of money to blow.
