VC should rent the place out free - the money they make on booze will cover the overheads.
There's a precedent for that - although not locally. But it's similar to the approach taken by some of the hotels that remain open throughout the winter; rather than close down, they stay open, but charge very little for rooms, hoping to make it back on bar and restaurant services.
I don't think running VC to make money is an easy task by a country mile, but I suspect a more flexible approach to their hiring policy might be needed. For instance, suppose it were hired out one night a week across the summer season for an Old Time Music Hall-type of production, which could be achieved through a great deal of local involvement. You couldn't charge visitors much more than £10 per head, and you couldn't' guarantee a weekly show would be packed out, so the VC management would have to come to an arrangement about their take.
There's a fair bit of local talent, and it's of the type that could interest our visitor profile, but organising it and running the show would be no easy task. Apart from organising the talent, auditioning, hiring of audition facilities, insurance, programme planning, photocopying, publicity, disc duplication, printing and so on, there would be the actual show itself, which would demand a weekly commitment from the performers - not an easy thing to get - in addition to the not insubstantial costs of insurance, performing rights' fees, performers' expenses, compliance fees, safety officer fees and ensuring that you covered the ticket office, stewards, in-town publicity, newspapers and 'internet, and all that's before the show opens for the first time.
In principle, you might get a fair number of folk willing to give their time on a voluntary basis; that's exactly how the Extravaganza began and ran for many years. But the Extravaganza - a concept which shares many similarities with the above proposal - also suffered from the same issues which afflict all voluntary societies: those involved are volunteers, so managing them is extremely difficult, as they don't feel they
'have' to do anything, and a curious tendency for most of the volunteers to evaporate during the event, leaving just one or two holding the baby.