Remaking Mid-Market by / Jean Schiffman

It is still a dreary trek along Market Street from Fifth Street to Van Ness Avenue: boarded-up shops, garbage-strewn pavement, padlocks on gated doorways, “For Lease” signs everywhere. But amid the squalor (and some gorgeous old buildings), there is also construction under way here in what’s called the Central Market district. The city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD) launched a public-private initiative in 2010 to transform this blighted neighborhood. If the arts community and the mayor’s office have their way, that neglected corridor will regain some of its long-lost cachet, with both the arts and the tech industry moving in to revitalize it.

In mid-May, Mayor Ed Lee called it “a total resurgence,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle, when he toured Twitter’s new home (as of this summer) in the old Merchandise Mart at 10th and Market, now called Market Square. As the Bay Citizen pointed out in April, Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, the Black Rock Arts Foundation (Burning Man) and SF Camerawork recently relocated to the ‘hood. A Summer of Art series is under way at UN Plaza, overseen by representatives from Theatre Bay Area, American Conservatory Theater, Denia Dance, LINES Ballet and other arts organizations (go to sfartscommission.org/artery for the lineup). Here’s an update on some of the developments that affect the theatre community as a whole.

American Conservatory Theater Expansion

Earlier this year, ACT bought the Strand, an old movie house in a 1917 building in the 1100 block of Market Street that had been closed since 2006. Donors Jeff and Laurie Ubben came up with the undisclosed purchase price of the building as part of ACT’s $18 million capital campaign. Executive director Ellen Richard says that ACT is “pretty far along” in the design process; the plan is for a 300-seat theatre and probably a second-floor public space for performance, classrooms, rehearsals and parties. She expects the Strand to open in 2014. Renovation on the space will begin in 2013; a capital campaign will finance it.

Meanwhile, ACT renovated its Costume Shop a few doors east on the same block to include a 50-seat theatre, which ACT hopes to increase to 100. It is currently used for rehearsals and MFA production work. In addition, the company has applied for a grant to host other theatre companies there—small nomadic theatres—rent-free. Richard expects to be able to make a more definitive announcement about that sometime soon, but is not yet ready to mention any particular small companies that might benefit. The company is renting the space out to an outside group in July for the first time, however, for Back It Up Productions’ “Project: Lohan.” “Our goal for the next couple of years is to keep the Costume Shop lit, an ongoing presence, through next season and until we can open the Strand,” Richard says.
  
ACT’s offices, classrooms and rehearsal spaces have been housed at 30 Grant for many years, but the lease is up next year, and Richard says the company can’t afford to stay there, so it is looking at other possible office spaces on Market Street. The eventual goal is to own its own offices and studios so as not be at the mercy of the commercial rental market, which, says Richard, is “just going crazy” right now. Currently ACT continues to rent the 200-seat Children’s Creativity Museum theatre (formerly Zeum) from Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for some of its MFA productions as well as Young Conservatory and second-stage shows.

PianoFight’s New Digs

The small for-profit theatre company PianoFight, operated by business partners Rob Ready, Dan Williams and Kevin Fink, previously partnered with Combined Art Form Entertainment (CAFE) to manage two theatres and a rehearsal space at 965 Mission Street. But they left that venue in 2011, when the landlord wanted to raise the already high rent. Besides, the venue had no street-front presence.

Ready and Williams looked for a new space, combing the downtown neighborhood on foot. The last place they went to was the old Original Joe’s at 144 Taylor, which closed due to a fire and had just come up for lease. There were still forks and ketchup bottles on the tables when Ready and Williams arrived. The 1910 building is a historical landmark.

Through private equity and government loans, and by connecting with the head of the OEWD in the mayor’s office and the nonprofit Urban Solutions (whose slogan is “building better neighborhoods one business at a time”), PianoFight had raised $250,000 of a total budget of $985,000 by mid-May.

In terms of the renovation, Ready reports that the floor plans are done, and everything is in place to obtain a liquor license. In the hub’s basement will be multiple rehearsal and office spaces and two dressing rooms; on the ground floor, a 75-seat theatre, a 55-seat theatre and a 60-seat restaurant and bar with a cabaret stage. PianoFight will produce its own content as well as rent out space to other companies and hopes to open by December this year. So far, it’s made commitments to about five to 10 companies, says Ready; most are theatres that produce work in line with PianoFight’s aesthetics: interactive theatre, comedy and new work by new artists. PianoFight’s biggest innovation will be a live recording suite in the larger theatre, with three cameras that would enable, among other things, live streaming.
  
950

Theatre Bay Area executive director Brad Erickson reports that he has been serving on a real estate committee—the Central Market Partnership—that also includes representatives from Grants for the Arts, the SF Arts Commission, the OEWD, the Tenderloin Economic Development Project, Northern California Community Loan Fund and other agencies and community organizations. The committee meets regularly to discuss how to connect nonprofit arts to spaces in Central Market, and, more generally, how to transform Central Market through the arts.

In January, Theatre Bay Area released the feasibility study it had commissioned for creating a multivenue theatre space in the 900 block of Market Street, referred to as “950.” The report said that such a space could be economically viable, and that TBA would be the best entity to run it. The proposed facility would have three to five theatre spaces, plus office and rehearsal space for ACT. Several properties on the eastern end of the block would be purchased and demolished to make way for the new facility.

For a long time, the sticking point has been gaining control of the properties, which have had various and multiple owners along the way. The idea, says Erickson, would be to create some midsized spaces (99 to 299 seats), which are sorely lacking in the Bay Area. Some companies would own their spaces outright; other spaces might be leased.

He hastens to add that the entire scope of the Mid-Market concept, of which the 950 building is only one element, is not gentrification but rather improvement without pushing out existing residents (although few actually live in housing on Market Street itself). He envisions the new, arts-oriented services that would arise as benefiting the local population: bringing kids in for classes, maybe programs for seniors too. “Technology and nonprofit arts can be a real catalyst—theatre in particular—leading the way for positive change,” he says.

“To see this breakthrough, with the mayor’s backing and the power of the mayoral office to make that happen, makes all the difference,” he adds. The reenvisioning of Market Street started under Gavin Newsom and was enthusiastically adopted by Mayor Lee. “This is not flavor of the moment,” asserts Erickson. “It’s a well-thought-out plan in its first stages of being implemented. It’s so exciting that the city is seeing the arts and especially theatre as being key to turning around the city’s main street, which is Market Street!”

But only a day later, after another Central Market Partnership meeting, Grants for the Arts director Kary Schulman says, “950 is looking much shakier than I thought.” She compares the ongoing effort to bring the arts into Central Market to putting together a jigsaw puzzle: “We believe we’ve got all the pieces, but we haven’t fit them together.” It’s a matter of matching up properties, groups and financing—and of resolving what’s referred to as the “site control” issue. Ellen Richard points out that ACT has been trying to acquire the 950 site for nearly two years, and during that time it has changed hands several times. “Right now we can’t get the site control,” she says. “We originally thought we’d put our 300-seat theatre there, but we really wanted to move forward with that, so it made sense to do the Strand, and if something happens at a later date [at the 950 venue] we’d move our offices there. But at the earliest that’s maybe five years away, more likely seven years.”

“I think there are extraordinary opportunities in Central Market,” says Schulman, noting that so many arts organizations and city departments are working so hard to fit those venue opportunities to the needs of the arts. By the time this article appears, Schulman predicts, things will have already changed—several times.


Jean Schiffman is an arts writer based in San Francisco.