OFA Replaces BosTix In Holyoke Box Office

After one year in the Square, discount theater ticket seller BosTix has vacated its Holyoke Center home and been replaced by a new Office for the Arts at Harvard and Radcliffe ticket booth.

The new box office will sell tickets for student events all across campus, taking over the responsibilities previously handled by the Sanders Theatre Box Office.

The Office for the Arts hopes the new box office location will attract more student event holders and ticket buyers due to its central location, said Box Office Manager Tina L. Smith.

Eric C. Engel, director of the Memorial Hall and Lowell Hall complex, is optimistic that the new location will also attract non-Harvard affiliated customers.

"We want to make it less confusing and more accessible, particularly for people not at Harvard," said Engel, who is also a senior manager with the Office of the Arts.

Engel said that selling tickets at Sanders Theatre box office--which will now only be used for pre-show ticket sales for events held at that location--led people to think, incorrectly, that only tickets for Sanders Theatre events could be sold at the box office.

"The hope is that, with the more central location, more event holders will take advantage of it, and more people will buy tickets," he said.

The Office for the Arts decided on the move in early May after Arts Boston, the non-profit organization that runs BosTix, announced it was vacating the site.

Engel said that BosTix decided that with other ticket-selling locations in Copley Square and the Faneuil Hall Market Place it "wasn't financially feasible to have another operation."

Since BosTix relied heavily on ticket sales to non-Harvard events, the location in Harvard Square may have been less than convenient.

"They concluded that it wasn't feasible to continue," Engel said.

The Office for the Arts hopes that the new Harvard Box Office will make it much easier to find tickets to events.

Smith said that she hopes that the new location will mean that people will be able to find tickets to many more events.

"We expect to be able to ticket all kinds of events," she said.

Undergraduate event holders can use the box office to sell tickets at no charge, while there is a small fee for Harvard departments.