Eureka Springs’ anti-tour bus and pro-gay reputation contributed to the closing of The Great Passion Play, an official said.

Keith Butler, chairman of the nonprofit Elna M. Smith Foundation, which operated the Passion Play, said the city shifted away from promoting the play and enacted two ordinances over the past 20 years that had hurt attendance ever since.

After 45 years, the Passion Play’s last performance was Oct. 27, and Cornerstone Bank of Eureka Springs will take over the 700-acre siteby the end of this month.

The foundation won’t be able to meet its approaching debt demands, said Charles Cross, president of Cornerstone Bank.

The Passion Play is a recreation of the final week of Jesus’ life and is performed in an outdoor amphitheater that seats 4,100.

The foundation had been trying to sell the property for $5.5 million but was unable to do so, said Cross. The organization has lost $1.8 million over the past four years, according to tax records.

Butler said the problems began in 1992, when theEureka Springs City Council “banned” tour buses from the city’s Historic Loop, also known as Old U.S. 62B.

“The decision to ban charter buses from going downtown was a watershed moment,” Butler said via e-mail.

“It marked the moment when the city started to stop supporting the Passion Play - the lifeline of Eureka Springs.

Before the play was here, the downtown was a ghost town with many businesses boarded up.”

Attendance at the Passion Play peaked in 1992 at 289,212, Butler said. The foundation promoted the play as “America’s Number One Attended Outdoor Drama.” By this year, attendance had dropped to 46,578. Butler said 7.6 million people attended the play during its 45 seasons.

On opening night in 1992, there were about 50 charter buses parked outside the amphitheater, Butler said. This year, a total of 60 busloads of visitors arrived during the entire 110-night season, which went from May 4 to Oct. 27.

Beau Satori, who was mayor of Eureka Springs from 1999 to 2002, said the city didn’t ban the buses. It passed an ordinance requiring drivers to register the buses with the city and drive in only one direction on the Historic Loop, which is basically one lane in some places because of vehicles parked at meters.

The city’s narrow streets were built for horses and buggies, and tour buses wouldsometimes get “stuck” trying to make a couple of doglegged turns when going north on Spring Street through the middle of town, said Satori.

Heading south on Spring Street, however, the buses could make the turns because they had more room. Also, vibrations from the buses rattled the fragile infrastructure of Eureka Springs, where homes are built on cliffs and the earth occasionally sinks or slides downhill, said Satori.

Although tour buses could still get to the Passion Play off U.S. 62 without driving on the Historic Loop, the “ban” sent a message to charter bus companies that they weren’t welcome in Eureka Springs,Butler said.

But Satori said it had to be done. The buses were clogging the city’s main thoroughfare and coating houses along Spring Street with exhaust soot.

“It felt like bumper-tobumper buses, and they were all wanting to go up Spring Street,” said Satori. “In order to get into the more fragile area of town, they have to have a pass, so they have to check in.” Satori said Branson, 50 miles to the northeast, built more hotels and entertainment venues after 1992, a year when the city was featured on a 60 Minutes television segment as being the new hot spot for country music. After that, bus tour operators had less incentive to make day trips from Branson to Eureka Springs, he said.

Dani Joy, who was Eureka Springs’ mayor from 2007-10, agreed.

“The biggest problem with the Passion Play is that when they were in their heyday, there wasn’t anything else,” said Joy. “Then Branson started booming, and that had an impact on the Passion Play.” The bus regulations were implemented to protect the city’s ambience, Joy said.

“It’s about preserving the historic nature of your town,” she said. “We sell a feeling of being captured in time 130 years ago. That’s what you have to preserve and protect.

And I think that’s what they did when they banned the buses off the loop. What they did was a visionary act to protect the city.” Butler said another blow

came in 2007 when the City Council adopted the state’s first domestic partnership registry. It allowed couples who weren’t married to register as domestic partners. The ordinance, which got national attention, was seen as some thing that promoted same-sex couples who live in Eureka Springs or visit there.

“We had several churches write to us saying they would never bring their churches back again because of it,” said Butler. “Those people would have spent money on hotels, restaurants and everything the town has to offer.” The Passion Play had a 13.6 percent drop in attendance in 2008, but the recession and a spike in gas prices likely played a bigger part in the decline than the registry did, said Butler. He believes the registry continued to depress attendance after 2008. (The Passion Play saw a bigger drop in attendance, about 30 percent, between 2003 and 2004, but the reason for that decline isn’t known, he said.)

The City Council passed a resolution last month supporting equality for same-sex couples. The vote was symbolic, but Michael Walsh, a supporter, said it would be good public relations, good advertising and would attract jobs to the city. Butler said there’s been “a great deal of animosity from some politically motivated people” in town against the Passion Play.

“I think part of this all comes down to the shift of approach in Eureka Springs,” he said. “They’ve gone to

wards this weekend events instead of a more sustainable approach.” Current Mayor Morris Pate said he’s unaware of any Passion Play animosity from city leaders, past or present.

“We’ve always supported them as far as I know,” Pate said. “We don’t have any control who comes here. As far as I’m concerned, everybody’s welcome to come to town.

What they do after they get here is up to them.” Mike Maloney, executive director of the Eureka Springs City Advertising and Promotion Commission, said tax revenue collected on lodging and restaurants is up more than 10 percent this year compared with last year.

“I don’t think it has affected our tourism economy that much,” he said of the gradual decline in attendance at the Passion Play. “You hate to see 46,000 not show up anymore.

You don’t want to see them go away.” Maloney said outdoor theater nationwide has been declining in popularity, and the Passion Play probably didn’t have a lot of repeat customers.

“It’s like a Broadway play,” he said. “How long can you run a Broadway play? At some point, everybody’s seen it who’s going to. ... Those people kind of ebbed away.” Maloney said the city still welcomes buses. They just have to register and abide by the one-direction rule. They’re allowed to stop in the courthouse parking lot to pick up and unload passengers who may want to have lunch or shop in downtown Eureka Springs, Maloney said.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 12/10/2012