John Schreiber, President & CEO, The New Jersey Performing Arts Center

In an interview with Invest:, John Schreiber, president and CEO of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC), highlighted the institution’s transformative $336 million campus redevelopment and its role as a cultural and economic catalyst for Newark. “We are the most diverse performing arts center in the country in terms of staff, programming, and audiences, a priority we pursue intentionally,” Schreiber added.

What changes over the past year have had the greatest impact on the New Jersey Performance Arts Center?

We’ve broken ground on a $336 million reimagining and redevelopment of our campus. We’re building 335 residential units on a former parking lot adjacent to our theaters, plus 15 townhomes on that lot. Our primary partner, developer LMXD, has completed projects in Newark, including the Hahne & Co. building and Walker House (formerly the Verizon Building). In another of our parking lots, we’re building the 58,000-square-foot Cooperman Family Arts Education and Community Center, featuring 12 smart classrooms, a children’s arts reading room, professional-grade rehearsal studios, and a 170-seat black box theater for community events. We’ll offer space grants to Newark artists to create new work in the studios and use them as rental facilities for touring Broadway productions. The Cooperman Center will operate about six days a week and serve everyone from parents with babies to older adults. The education center will open in the first quarter of 2027, and the residential units will be move-in ready by fall 2027. 

We’re also working with Great Point Studios and Lionsgate to construct a 250,000-square-foot TV and film studio in Newark’s South Ward on an abandoned public housing site. This studio will transform the community, creating jobs (70% of them earmarked for Newarkers), and it will offer educational, internship, and apprenticeship programs for students hoping to build careers in the burgeoning TV and film industry in New Jersey. These developments advance our role as an anchor cultural institution in Newark. 

Given the current economy and ongoing shifts, how have these impacted the entertainment market and NJPAC, if at all?

So far, we haven’t seen a drop-off in our business. We’re presenting about 25% more concerts and events this year than last year. Our earned revenues are as high as they’ve ever been. We’ve noticed that in our ticket-selling and concert business, people are buying later now than before, making decisions closer to the date. I think this stems from a quiet anxiety, likely due to fluctuations in tariffs, markets, and related factors, causing people to watch their dollars more closely. However, this has not yet resulted in a diminution of our business.

Have you noticed any other significant shifts in audience behavior affecting NJPAC?

Not particularly. Our business model for our concert business celebrates the diversity of the state. We program each season predictably for a dozen different ethnicities and nationalities, including the Latino audience, and subsets like Portuguese, Brazilian, Cuban, or Puerto Rican audiences, offering diverse ways to entertain them. The African American audience is a significant market, as is the South Asian and Indian audience. Our opportunity is to provide each of these communities with programs they’ll love. These communities, along with more traditional, older, white audiences, shape our year. As long as we’re thoughtful about who we present, our odds are good. However, entertainment is a risky, unpredictable business. That’s why we’re advancing non-traditional revenue streams for a performing arts center, including real estate development, touring, television, and other businesses in which we have marketable knowledge and see the potential to turn a profit.

How does NJPAC serve as both a cultural and economic driver for Newark and North Jersey? 

We take to heart our role as an anchor cultural institution, serving the community in predictable and unpredictable ways. An anchor institution is an entity permanently rooted in its community that makes the well-being of that community a part of its mission, alongside its primary business. As the anchor cultural institution for Newark and New Jersey, we are offered daily opportunities to be useful to millions of potential constituents. People regularly bring us ideas; sometimes we stage or develop them, sometimes we suggest other partner organizations, and sometimes we help shape ideas to make them feasible. This improvisational aspect of our job is enjoyable. We also run the largest arts education program in New Jersey, reaching 100,000 children and families every year through classroom programs, our conservatory, and performances. 

Our maker model of arts education empowers kids as creators and producers of their own work.  We help foster voice, confidence, and career prospects. We have a Community Engagement unit that produces 250 free cultural events annually across New Jersey, from hip hop to musical theater, dance, and poetry, sharing the arts for all, regardless of means. This is a joyful responsibility. 

We have another business unit that focuses on arts and well-being, which we created after seeing research showing that engagement with the arts benefits mental and physical health. In fact, the research shows that attending an arts event once or twice a month is as good for your health as an hour of exercise every week. Our ArtsRx program prescribes six months of free arts events, including glassblowing at GlassRoots, Newark Museum of Art tours, line dancing at Symphony Hall, and NJPAC concerts. This social impact work, alongside concert production, is central to our mission.

What impact do you expect the North To Shore Festival to have on audiences across New Jersey?

This was the third edition of North to Shore, and Prudential Financial was once again our title sponsor. The festival featured more than 200 events during the last two weeks in June in Newark and Asbury Park, with a year’s worth of events planned for Atlantic City. What’s interesting and unique about North To Shore is that it’s not just a series of headliner events in each city. While the lineup includes wonderful, ticketed performances by world-renowned artists, what’s equally important is that we’ve granted about $400,000 in awards to local artists and organizations in Newark, Asbury Park, and Atlantic City, enabling them to produce and present unique work as part of the festival. This creates a bottom-up, topdown event, amplifying the year-round arts activities created by these talented individuals.

What upcoming projects or initiatives are you most excited about, and what is your outlook for the next two to three years?

The first thing on the horizon is to continue programming as diversely as possible, reaching as many different communities as possible. We are the most diverse performing arts center in the country in terms of staff, programming, and audiences, a priority we pursue intentionally. Of our annual events, 40% are fine arts programs, including classical music, jazz, dance, and world music — art forms that aren’t big money makers. We budget to lose money on these, believing it’s crucial to present the best artists. No other venue in New Jersey does that to this extent.

Secondly, we need, must, and will finish our real estate development work. Once those facilities open, it will transform our community, setting the stage for the next generation of success and growth, especially for our home city of Newark, which is dear to me and to our team. Future initiatives include another phase of real estate development with more construction. We also believe our efforts to drive economic development in Newark as a cultural institution could inspire others nationwide. This requires a coalition of the willing, tailored to each market, with public-private partnerships and a feasible vision. I’m excited to see our projects come to fruition and to share our vision of what an anchor cultural institution can accomplish elsewhere.