Planned for 2023, COPA will bring a $35 million performing arts facility to Fitchburg.
If you’re wondering what 85-year-old Mike Leckrone has been up to since retiring in 2019 as director of the University of Wisconsin Marching Band, he’s taught a UW-Madison continuing education class on Big Band music, written music for the Madison New Horizons Band, and has become the face and voice of a burgeoning arts education incubator called COPA.
Community Organizations Promoting the Arts will be anchored in a new 70,000-square-foot, $35 million performing arts facility slated to open in 2023 in Fitchburg. Its mission will be to provide a training ground for youths and adults in music, dance, theater and other fine arts.
“It’s very ambitious, obviously, but it’s worth pursuing,” says Leckrone, COPA’s “lead community ambassador” and a key financial supporter via the Mike Leckrone Family Foundation (more on that later). “I think there’s a need for three or four of these kinds of centers all around Dane County, beyond the COPA facility.”
Leckrone isn’t the only big name attached to the project. COPA’s visionary is Dale Sticha, owner of SOSONIC (an audio, video and multimedia company on Madison’s south side) and Elton John’s touring piano technician since 1992. Other ambassadors include Nirvana’s Nevermind producer and Garbage drummer Butch Vig, and Tony Award winner and UW-Madison alum André De Shields.
“I’ve always had a vision of creating an arts education facility,” Sticha says. “My professional career took me around the world with Elton John for the last 30 years, and I’ve had time to check out the communities we visited and see how they support the arts — not only on the performance and visual sides, but also on the technical side.”
When John announced his Farewell Tour, which includes a stop in Milwaukee in April 2022 and concludes in New Zealand in early 2023, Sticha made a decision.
“I don’t really want to tour for the rest of my life, but I refuse to get out of the arts,” he says. “This is a way I can give back to the Dane County community and share something I’m passionate about. We’re going to be focused on the arts needs of the community, not just on one or two organizations. COPA will allow organizations the opportunity to expand without always worrying about how they’re going to pay their rent or oversee facility management.”
COPA’s business model will be an à la carte one, in which groups pay for what they use. While the facility originally was designed to meet the needs of Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras, Children’s Theater of Madison, Madison Ballet and Madison Youth Choirs, those organizations are no longer involved in the COPA project, Sticha says.
WYSO is planning on building a new facility at the site of the Avenue Club on East Washington Avenue, and the other organizations are now headed to the Youth Arts Building being built at East Washington Avenue and Ingersoll Street.
That leaves plenty of room for other groups to join SOSONIC as a resident tenant of the new facility when it opens. “We have 40 organizations in Dane County that, if this were already built, would be in it tomorrow,” Sticha says.
Jeff Miller/UW-Madison
Former UW Band director Mike Leckrone is taking a lead on fundraising for COPA.
Sticha and Leckrone had never met, but when a friend suggested Sticha contact the former band director, he quickly realized Leckrone would be the ideal COPA partner.
“Mike is truly a legend in this community, and he has been one of our strongest advocates and supporters,” Sticha says. “He sees what this project can do. He knows it’s an uphill climb, but he believes in it.”
Leckrone says he got involved for several reasons. “First, I firmly believe there needs to be more opportunities for people to perform, rehearse, attend seminars and workshops — all sorts of things,” he says. “I also like that the COPA facility will be all-inclusive. Dance, opera, graphic arts, everything. My feeling is that it has to be all-inclusive for it to be effective. There’s huge potential, but there also needs to be momentum to get this going.”
That momentum increased July 18, when COPA held a free event to kick off fundraising efforts via the new Mike Leckrone Family Foundation — COPA’s chief fundraising arm. Leckrone led an all-star jazz ensemble featuring UW-Madison band alumni who flew in from around the country to participate, and the lineup of local talent included performances by members of the Monona Academy of Dance and Latin Pride Orquesta.
Sticha says he hopes the entire project will be funded through naming rights, as well as private donations and grants. COPA has a volunteer grant writer, and a capital campaign is in the works.
The COPA facility will be built at 2823 Index Road in Fitchburg, off Fish Hatchery Road just south of the Beltline, on a piece of property owned by Sticha. In addition to a 400-seat proscenium-style theater with an orchestra pit and a costume shop, it will include spaces for group rehearsals, individual practices, classes, technical training, open mic sessions, meetings, workshops, offices and storage facilities.
The Index Road property is within walking distance of SOSONIC’s existing building, which will remain and continue to do studio work. The Madison Music Foundry is located on Index Road, and the Madison Opera warehouse is nearby, says Sticha, who envisions a small arts-group district in the area.
“I’ve never raised this kind of money before, but I know it can be done,” Sticha says, adding that he hopes COPA will be a model for other cities. “The arts are really important to the development of our communities.”
[Editor's note: An original version of this article listed Nancy Mistele as the executive director of COPA (she is no longer serving in that position) and it has been corrected to note that COPA's grant writer is a volunteer; it is not a paid position.]
