‘Scandalous’: Marin extends closure of key performance venue

Marin Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium, the county’s largest indoor performance space, will remain closed through 2026, county officials said.

The venue, which has about 2,000 seats, was closed in May 2023 for extensive repairs. It was supposed to reopen by December 2025.

Gabriella Calicchio, director of the county’s Department of Cultural Services, sent event producers an email notifying them of the new schedule on Oct. 10.

The delay is frustrating news for arts organizations that rely on the space for performances. Even before the closure, some groups were denied use of the building for long periods because of other repair glitches or the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I didn’t believe the 2025 timeline. I don’t believe the 2026 timeline,” said Tod Brody, Marin Symphony’s executive director. “We’ve been told so many things. They haven’t come close to meeting a single one of their timelines. It is scandalous.”

Nancy Rehkopf, executive director of Marin Ballet, said, “It’s a big disappointment but not a surprise simply because the project has been missing its dates for so many years now. We’re feeling a little bit abandoned.”

Event producers were told initially that the auditorium would be closed starting in July 2022, and there were several false starts after that. When it was closed in 2023, the producers were initially told it would reopen by this month. Then the date was moved back to October 2025, then to December 2025.

The reason given for the latest rescheduling is that additional work is required. Calicchio wrote in her email to producers that “an elevator to the dressing rooms was not feasible given the original timeframe, so an alternative solution to providing accessible dressing rooms had to be found; sewer lines in the Green Room restroom needed to be replaced; and changes needed to be made to the orchestra pit lifting mechanism to better fit the constraints of the building.”

Calicchio also said a delay was caused by a mistaken belief that a new generator would be necessary in lieu of a backup battery for emergency lighting.

The repairs began with about $6.85 million of seismic retrofitting that was delayed because the initial bids to do the work exceeded the funds available at the time. During the retrofitting, new problems were discovered.

Inspections by engineers determined that while the building’s perimeter foundation was structurally sound, soil under the foundation had settled substantially and caused concrete cracking, voids beneath the floor and damage to drainage and sewer lines. Water intrusion over the years had damaged lift equipment, electrical equipment and the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system.

Prior to the new list of repairs, the work plan’s components included the auditorium’s heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system; the orchestra pit lift mechanism; sewer lines, roof drains, floors and fixtures in lobby restrooms; fresh paint in public spaces; and a facility master plan for future front-of-house improvements. The work was estimated to cost over $15 million.

“It seems like as we keep going, it just gets bigger,” Marin County Public Works Director Rosemarie Gaglione said.

Gaglione said the builders didn’t alway stick to the design plans when constructing the auditorium. She said that typically when builders deviate from plans, they record drawings to show what changes were made.

“We just don’t have those,” she said.

The auditorium was not designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect of the Marin County Civic Center, but by Wright’s son-in-law and protege, William Wesley Peters.

Last week, county supervisors approved a plan to hire a new design firm with experience and expertise in performing arts theater projects to map the course for upgrades.

“With work commencing on long-term planning efforts for the VMA — which will include schematic plans for modern seating configurations, the addition of a rear soundwall, and improvements to the lobby spaces among other enhancements — it has become clear to staff that the current building infrastructure design work needs to be coordinated with the future facility planning efforts, and should be performed by a firm with theatrical architecture specialization,” a staff report stated.

Gaglione said it is uncertain at this point whether any of these more ambitious projects will be incorporated into the work plan slated for completion by the end of 2026. She said the new design firm will help determine that.

“Right now we’re looking at reopening the VMA in 2027, but there could be conversations with the architect that would tell us that it makes more sense, and it’s more cost effective, to add something on,” Gaglione said. “We won’t know until the architect really digs into this.”

Calicchio said, “I think that if the county can include any of those additional things, they will. But I don’t have clarity on whether that’s even a possibility.”

She said funding additional improvements would be a concern.

“I think it would have to be some kind of combination of public-private philanthropy to get there,” said Calicchio, who is set to depart the county job next month to become executive director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

For the producers anxiously waiting to regain access to the VMA, time is money.

“This has so far cost us hundreds of thousands in lost revenue and could end up costing millions,” Brody said.

Brody said the alternative venues the symphony has found hold less than a third of the people that the VMA holds, and he worries the symphony is losing donors who supply a large share of the organization’s revenue.

“We’re going to survive, but we’re going to survive in a weakened state,” Brody said. “And that’s hard to swallow.”

Rehkopf estimates that Marin Ballet has lost about $80,000 a year in ticket sales during the closure.