Editorial: Marin Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium closure has gone from annoying to alarming

In May 2023, when the county announced that the Marin Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium would have to be closed for more than a year, officials asked the public to be patient.

The 2,000-seat cultural venue, Marin’s largest theater, needed significant repairs and would be as good as new when it reopened to play host to performances and lectures.

Now, officials are predicting the auditorium will stay closed through 2026.

That not only means an additional year of costly repairs, but for nonprofit local performing groups, it means another year without the revenue that the larger venue provides.

“They haven’t come close to meeting a single one of their timelines,” said Tod Brody, executive director of the Marin Symphony, which for decades has called the auditorium its home.

Understandably frustrated, he calls the latest delay “scandalous.”

That may be an overstatement, but his frustration is justified. Certainly it is very troubling that the county’s building experts could get it so wrong, not by a few months, but by more than a year.

Originally, organizations that rent the auditorium were told by the county that the venue would be closed in July 2022. That was delayed to May 2023 with a goal of reopening in October 2024.

That was bad enough for their organizations, planning and budgets.

Then the county announced the reopening date would have to be moved to October 2025. Then, it was before the end of 2025.

The latest county report has the auditorium have to remain closed through 2026.

Certainly, construction can be like peeling through layers. Once you start digging into a building, there are surprises. The original builders’ unrecorded diversions from the blueprints have also complicated the work.

With the center positioned on bay mud, finding out additional work is needed doesn’t come as a surprise. While officials determined the building’s foundation is sound, the soil under the foundation has settled, causing myriad problems, among them damage to drainage and sewer lines and water intrusion that has caused a litany of needed repairs – a list that is growing.

Now, this project is going to wind up taking more than three years; at least that’s the county’s latest prediction.

The repairs started with seismic-safety retrofit work that cost the county $6.8 million. The cost has grown by $15.8 million.

The county’s handling of this important public project needs public focus, including regular public updates that will help apply attention and pressure to get it done on time – and on budget.

Confidence that a focus is being applied was dampened by the county’s recent news release that repairs to the Marin Center Showcase Theater – a different building on the campus – had been completed.

That’s a much smaller repair job with a much smaller budget.

Buried at the bottom of that release was the disappointing update on the auditorium.

The county administration, the Cultural Affairs Commission and supervisors need to ride herd on getting this work done with priority focus and diligent progress.

By the time the work is supposed to be completed and reopened, the auditorium will have been closed to the public for more than three years.

At this point, sadly, there’s reason to lack confidence in officials’ estimates that this longtime center for cultural arts will return by 2027.

We hope that this time we can trust their estimate and the auditorium plays host to performances and lectures instead of construction crews.