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NIGHT AT THE OPERA

When Bradley Fair’s shops close, curtain opens on concerts

BY LEE KESSLER

Friday night is music night at Bradley Fair. Thousands come to hear a wide range of music, from jazz to a performance of Bizet’s Carmen (above), staged last fall.

The operators of Bradley Fair say they have found the formula that makes their lifestyle center the place to be on summer Friday nights in Wichita, Kan. But it has nothing to do with shopping.

The lifestyle center has made a name for itself with a Friday night free concert series, at the side of a 12,000-square-foot plaza with a fountain in the middle. The most ambitious musical offering so far was Bizet’s opera Carmen last September — for its staging.

A range of other tastes get catered to as well. “The traffic that it brings to the center is unbelievable,” said Shawna Steadman, manager of the center’s Eddie Bauer store. “For my business it absolutely has helped because it brings in a new pool of customers who maybe have not shopped with us in the past.”

Many people bring lawn chairs to set up in the plaza, which is beside a man-made lake flanked by an island with large, mature trees and a man-made waterfall.

“The concerts begin at 8,” said George Laham, president of Laham Development, the center’s developer-owner. “And they’ll start showing up at 6 o’clock to stake their claim.” Other concertgoers reserve an outdoor table at Cibolla, a locally owned restaurant with seating along the plaza. “Those tables get booked well in advance,” said Laham.

The other restaurants at Bradley Fair also benefit from the concert series. “It’s a great draw for Bradley Fair and for us too,” said Steve Crocombe, managing partner of Mexican restaurant On The Border. “We get a late rush afterwards — and sometimes an earlier one too, before the music starts.”

Heat Index, a jazz and R&B band, played Bradley Fair last Fourth of July, followed by fireworks over the lake. “It was fantastic,” said band leader and sax player David Parsely. “By the time we finished, people were dancing all over.”

The tenants are applauding too. Bradley Fair hosts 46 tenants in 255,000 square feet on a 40-acre site in the city’s northeast section. The developer says it is the only lifestyle center in Wichita, and was the first to bring many national retailers to the city of 525,000. The first stores opened in 1990, and today the retailers include Ann Taylor, Eddie Bauer, Pier 1 Imports, Talbots and Victoria’s Secret, among others.

The center saves locals a lot of traveling time. Before, they would drive two hours to Tulsa, Okla., or three hours to Kansas City to find the same retailers. About 134,000 people live within 5 miles of the center; the average household income is about $73,500 a year. Laham co-developed Bradley Fair with Dan Lowe, buying him out in 1994. Lowe was later one of the cofounders of RED Development, in Kansas City, Mo.

Concerts are paid for by the tenants and the landlord through a marketing fund that is disbursed by the owners with the consultation of a tenant committee. Some of the money goes to support the concert series and some for such holiday activities as a tree-lighting ceremony and free horse-drawn carriage rides around the center. To promote these activities, Laham has formed an alliance with local radio station KRBB-FM.

“They promote the concert, basically at no charge,” said Laham, explaining that the center is an advertising customer of the radio station. Brett Harris, a popular radio personality at the station, serves as master of ceremonies for the shows and other events at the center.

The Carmen performance was a year in the making. The Wichita Grand Opera company, which has a cast of 120, performed on a set specially built on the island in the lake; the 41-piece Wichita Symphony Orchestra, meanwhile, sat in the plaza with the audience. This distance created quite a challenge for the sound engineers. The singers over on the island were picked up by microphone, with the speakers placed on the plaza, near the audience. But the singers were cueing to the sound of the orchestra after it traveled back across the lake, an appreciable delay that made it impossible for them to get together. Wild gesticulations of despair were seen among the impresarios during rehearsals, until an ingenious solution was devised. They hoisted the grand piano onto the island and had the pianist wear headphones, listening to the live orchestra. The singers then cued to the piano. It worked.

The prized seats at Cibolla, dinner and champagne included, sold for $300. Other tickets were priced at $30, $60 and $90. Because of the high cost — Laham declines to say how high — he did not draw from the Bradley Fair marketing fund for this production. Instead, Laham, a member of the board of the Wichita Grand Opera, met the outstanding costs from his personal charitable foundation. Though the first of three scheduled performances was canceled because of rain (the only musical event at Bradley Fair ever to be so afflicted) the other two both played to a capacity crowd of 1,200, who were treated to beautiful weather and a full moon rising over the set.

Now preparing for the sixth concert season, Laham says he expects attendance to exceed last year’s estimate of 25,000 people over nine shows. (Tickets are not sold for the regular concerts, so there is no way to know the exact number of people attending.) Laham figures that 15 to 20 percent of the crowd comes from outside Wichita.

Laham was born and raised in Wichita, and his commitment to involving the community in Bradley Fair is evident. “As they make it real clear in Wichita,” he said, “Bradley Fair is public property.”

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