Having an office in the nation’s capital situates Chautauqua in proximity major major program partners and granting agencies. In addition, it is an important part of our strategic plan’s aspiration to solve for Chautauqua’s labor and talent challenges. The people who work out of the DC office live in that metropolitan area. Many of them are Advancement staff, but our president sometimes also works out of that office, as well as the director of Chautauqua’s climate change initiative. The location has easy access to three airports and the East Coast train systems, which is important particularly for Advancement professionals. It also enables us to host meetings and program activities (those that are planned for approximately 40 or fewer participants). Like everything we do, we will continue to assess this initiative for its benefits and costs. The annual expense of this space is approximately $250K and expenses are divided among the operating budgets of the various departments that use the space. We have leased the space through August 2028.

This is not the only time in Chautauqua’s history when a satellite office was leveraged. Our opera company had a New York City office for years. President Arthur Bestor also had remote offices in New York and Chicago at different times and for similar reasons associated with the need for office space in those locations and their proximity to partners and thought leaders.