An iconic performing arts venue is back open. Can Oakland keep it alive?

OAKLAND — It was crunch time before one of the East Bay’s most iconic landmarks, the Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts, was set to open its doors once more, a century after its construction and two decades after the venue was shuttered.

Within the building’s awe-inspiring 19th-century French-style architecture, in a makeshift backroom office space, a small group of weary-eyed workers hunched over laptops on shared desks, preparing for the public presentation of its new look.

It had cost East Bay real-estate firm Orton Development about $100 million to bring the historic site back to life. Now, a nonprofit assembled to manage the three-story, 215,000-square-foot events space by Lake Merritt was in the throes of final preparations for its 72-hour grand reopening.

“When I see the looks on people’s faces as they walk in,” said the organization’s CEO of two years, Terri Trotter, “and they talk about their memories with this space, that’s what has kept me in it. It’s what I love about doing this.”

The venue’s triumphant return this past week saw workers pushing through graveyard shifts to navigate the flurry of events: a Tina Turner-themed musical, a roller-skating party, a free community festival, a Children’s Fairyland puppet show, a formal ribbon-cutting by Mayor Barbara Lee and a headlining performance by illusionist Scott Silven.

Trotter, a Midwest native, was pacing breathlessly through the site, aware of her responsibility to a city that has been through some tough times.

That’s because the building’s return is not just important for its nostalgic value: it’s also a key test of Oakland’s economic recovery. There are expectations among Oaklanders that the venue — including its massive hardwood arena with stadium seating, a 1,350-seat theater named for late Bay Area conductor Calvin Simmons and several smaller gathering spaces, including a banquet room overlooking the lake — will be a boon for the city.

But even before the doors opened, Trotter was dealing with a familiar hurdle: sealing a labor agreement with the stagehands union, IATSE Local 107, whose president Ken Keithlin said negotiations had “hit a brick wall” before resuming in earnest this past week.

“We 100% intend to keep talking to them,” Trotter said Thursday, a couple days after the union had descended on the building to distribute leaflets outside. “It’s been a hard, hard project. We’re just getting going, but we will figure this out.”

Then there’s the number that looms over the feel-good festivities: $5 million. The center is expected to bring in that amount of revenue each year through ticket sales, private bookings and philanthropic funds to cover all its costs, including a 99-year lease with the city.

The sheer size and scope of the site presented a range of logistical challenges ahead of the reopening. Together, the building’s various spaces comprise the second-largest events venue in Oakland, next to the Coliseum stadium-arena complex.

“This whole building is a giant Lego set,” said James Sherwin, the nonprofit’s head of production services, gesturing out at the arena that by itself stands three-stories tall. “Our job is to fill out the picture, step by step, piece by piece.”

The convention center ramped up with a few standalone events over the past few months, including a memorial for John Beam, the late Laney College football coach.

The reopening festivities came together in just a couple months’ time, with a marketing campaign that Trotter acknowledges did not generate much hype in advance. But the longtime executive of arts centers has an intricately detailed vision for what could become of every corner of the “Henry J.,” a place no Oaklander has stepped foot in for two decades.

“She’s been nuts her whole life,” said Trotter’s sister, Nancy Reid, who had traveled from Arkansas that day to see the venue come to life.

The revival of a once-prominent gathering space — just a five-minute walk from the Lake Merritt BART station — arrives at a moment of transition in Oakland, where beloved bars and restaurants across town are struggling to stay alive amid changing consumer habits.

Downtown office vacancy rates continue to steadily climb, rising from 20% at the start of 2024 to 28.5% in the final fiscal quarter of last year, according to data compiled by Colliers, a Bay Area real-estate agency.

In this case, the Henry J.’s leaders view the building’s complexity as an advantage. Instead of restricting audiences to three-hour events in a single auditorium, the staff plan to invite guests to explore the rest of the building and mingle over refreshments in its vast hallways.

The arena, which Orton Development considered converting to office space before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, once hosted Martin Luther King Jr., Elvis Presley, Bob Marley and Tina Turner.

A vintage scoreboard hangs from the ceiling. Thousands of stadium seats that tower over the floor will likely be replaced in the coming months. There remains a Cal logo painted at half court, from when the women’s college basketball team played home games there.

The theater is intended to be a more intimate alternative to the Fox and Paramount theaters where smaller live acts can find a home. Its newly installed oak-colored seats fill the ground floor and two mezzanines above. European-style art is engraved into the balcony walls, evoking the grand aura of classical theaters from past centuries.

“No one at the city ever thought we were going to get rich on this deal,” said Kelley Kahan, an economic and workforce development official at the city. “It was really about saving the building.”

The city ran the Kaiser auditorium by itself for years, eventually shuttering the building when its budget costs became untenable. Homeless encampments soon sprang up around the site. In 2011, Occupy Oakland protesters unsuccessfully tried to reclaim the building as a community space.

Now that the building is back in business, Trotter hopes residents of the city and Bay Area alike take the landmark seriously enough to support its new life.

“When you are an Oaklander, there’s such a pride in wanting to help your neighbors and be civically engaged,” she said. “The first thing that struck me here is, ‘That’s an amazing building.’ But being here in this area, you realize, ‘This is an amazing community.'”