In June 2006, theatrical consultant Jack W. Batman took a call from the board at the White Plains Performing Arts Center.

“They said, ‘Take a look at this and see if this theater’s worth saving,’ because they’d been losing a lot of money,” recalls Batman, whose name is pronounced BAT-min.

“I looked at the books and what had been happening – and the bad press – and I came up with a business plan,” he says.

The plan evaluated performances, budgets, and subscription plans – everything a theater needs to be successful.

He presented the plan to the board and recommended they find an artistic director to put the plan into action.

A couple of weeks later, the board called Batman back.

“They said, ‘This is all great. We’ve digested all this. And would you like to be the artistic director?’ ” Batman recalls with a laugh.

“I thought about it and I said ‘This is an opportunity not to be missed. It’s a half-hour from the city. It’s not a big deal. I can’t get to Brooklyn in the time I can get here.”

Batman’s resumé includes years as a theatrical agent and as a casting director for more than 200 professional shows. He helped develop the successful Chelsea Piers entertainment complex, produced dozens of events there and ran the venue’s publicity campaigns.

“Then I came back to the theater,” he says with a gleam in his eye, “because I was making too much money.”

He was an associate producer of the Tony-nominated Broadway play “Enchanted April,” which ran for five months at the Belasco Theatre, closing Aug. 31, 2003.

He and WPPAC marketing director Bruce Robert Harris are the producers of the monthlong Gayfest NYC, an annual festival of new plays and musicals of new works by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender authors, or plays that spotlight gay-friendly subject matter.

Taking over the job in February, Batman put into motion the plan he had laid out: the performances, the budget and the subscription plans.

The Performing Arts Center would be an Equity house, a home for professional actors.

And it would only do musicals.

Harris, who handles the venue’s advertising and marketing, says the team did a lot of research before they jumped into the venture. That included asking people what they wanted to see.

“Ninety-nine percent said musicals,” Harris recalls.

So the 410-seat White Plains Performing Arts Center – which started life as another venue run by the people who ran the now-defunct Helen Hayes Theater Company in Nyack – will produce big Broadway hits with professional actors.

There will be three mainstage productions – “Man of La Mancha,” “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” – and one concert version of a musical, “Ragtime.”

Those shows will be produced, cast, directed and acted by people employed by the Performing Arts Center. But Batman will also be a presenter, bringing in road shows, tours or other special events, all with music in them.

The business plan boils down to: If we sing it, they will come.

Changes are well under way at the theater on the third floor of the City Center mall.

New signs will direct theatergoers, there’s new paint and carpet, and a new facade – complete with old-fashioned lights – will make the center look different from its next-door neighbor, the multiplex.

“People have already stopped coming in and asking us what time the next movie starts,” Batman says. “We used to get all kinds of people coming in to ask that.”

Now, if the plan works, people will be coming in and asking for two on the aisle for an impressive lineup of musicals.

The season kicks off Oct. 19 and 20 with a special event, the Broadway-bound national tour of “Irving Berlin’s ‘I Love a Piano,’ ” fresh from Boston’s Colonial Theater.

Directed and choreographed by Ray Roderick and co-written with Michael Berkeley, “I Love a Piano” highlights dozens of Berlin classics, from “God Bless America” and “Easter Parade” to “White Christmas” and “Puttin’ on the Ritz” – a song that gets a different Broadway treatment this fall, in Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein.”

Batman says it’s the first time the Berlin estate has allowed a revue of the songman’s music out of the context of the original shows. And audiences in White Plains will be able to see three performances of the show before it moves on to Broadway.

“This is the type of theater everyone has asked us for,” Harris says.

The Berlin revue is followed, on Nov. 16, by another special event, “Diva Dish! with Luke Yankee,” a musical tribute to Broadway and Hollywood from a man with a unique perspective: Yankee is the son of Oscar-winner Eileen Heckart (“Butterflies Are Free”).

Right after Thanksgiving, the mainstage Broadway Classics Series kicks off with “Man of La Mancha,” Mitch Leigh’s musical retelling of the story of Don Quixote. The show runs twelve performances, from Nov. 29 through Dec. 16.

The new year kicks off with a three-performance concert version of the Stephen Flaherty-Lynn Ahrens musical “Ragtime,” based on E.L. Doctorow’s novel. That show runs Feb. 1-3 and is the season’s lone offering in what Batman and Harris hope grows into a whole series of concert performances, similar to “Encores!” at that other City Center, the one in Midtown.

“We’re already two-thirds sold out for the three nights, and it’s not till February,” Batman says.

The mainstage season continues Feb. 28 through March 16 with “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and concludes with “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” from April 24 to May 11.

Batman is familiar with the area, having been a casting director for Westchester Broadway Theatre for years, sending New York actors up to Westchester to put on musicals.

Now, he’s the one they’ll be coming to.

“The interest in musicals in Westchester just astounds me, from the high schools on up,” Batman says. “This is big. Obviously they want musicals.”

The clear competition for the musical-theater dollar in Westchester is Westchester Broadway, the 34-year-old dinner theater down 287 and up Route 9A from White Plains.

Batman says he’s lunched with his former bosses, WBT co-founders Bill Stutler and Bob Funking, and says they take a more-the-merrier approach to the new kids on the block.

“Bill said, ‘We do long runs, 12 weeks, 14 weeks. The truth of the matter is each person in the audience comes once. We don’t want just an audience of people who go to the theater once every 12 weeks. We want people to keep going to theater. We think it’s great that you’re here, too,’ ” Batman says.

“To me, that’s a vote of confidence from the boys eight miles away,” he says with a laugh.

White Plains Performing Arts Center
Where: 11 City Place, White Plains, in the City Center mall
Call: 914-328-1600
Finding it: Take Mamaroneck Avenue to the intersection with Main Street. Turn right and, at the first light, turn right into the City Center parking garage. Go to the top level. Park and take the walkway across to the PAC, which is next to the movie theater.
Broadway Classics Series – “Man of La Mancha,” Nov 29 – Dec 16; – “Ain’t Misbehavin,’” Feb. 28 – March 16; – “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” April 24 – May 11.
Tickets: $35 to $60 for each show; three-play subscriptions from $75 to $150.
Broadway in Concert – “Ragtime,” Feb. 1 – 3.
Tickets: $35, $45.
Special Events – “Irving Berlin’s ‘I Love a Piano,’ ” (National Tour Prior to Broadway), Oct. 19, 20.
Tickets: $50, $60. – “Diva Dish! with Luke Yankee,” (A Personal Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood Stars), Nov. 16.
Tickets: $40, $45. – “Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez” (A Mardi Gras Celebration), Feb. 9.
Tickets: $50, $60.
Family and Kids Series – “The Day It Snowed Tortillas,” Oct. 13 at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.
Tickets: $20, $16 for kids. – “Yarina: Remembrances of Ecuador,” Oct. 27 at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Tickets: $20, $16 for kids. – “Pirates,” Nov. 3 at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.
Tickets: $20, $16 for kids. – “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day,” Feb. 10 at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.
Tickets: $20, $16 for kids. – “The Wizard of Oz,” March 30 at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.
Tickets: $20, $16 for kids. – “Audra Rox,” April 6 at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m.
Tickets: $20, $16 for kids.
International Series – “Hip, Heymish & Hot,” (Yiddish Soul) Nov. 10 at 8 p.m.; Nov. 11 at 2 p.m. Tickets: $30, $35. – “Syren Modern Dance: ‘Abravanel,’ ” Nov. 17 at 8 p.m.
Tickets: $30, $35. – “Ballet Los Pampas,” April 5 at 8 p.m. Tickets: $30, $35. – “MacTalla Mor,” April 12 at 8 p.m. Tickets: $30, $35.