Supporters of a new downtown theater said they plan to give an update to the Los Altos City Council Nov. 12 on the status of their work. The presentation could include an ask for the city to fund a full-time development director to oversee fundraising of $25 million needed to build the theater.
Appearing before members of the Los Altos Community Coalition Oct. 18, Los Altos Stage Company President Vicki Reeder and LASC artistic director Gary Landis ran through a history of new theater planning thus far, which included the creation of a New Theater Working Group in 2021 and feasibility studies that showed the need and benefits for such a facility and how it could be funded.
Reeder and Landis were working from a premise that the city council has adopted a 2018 Downtown Vision plan that included building a theater in parking plaza 2, between Second and Third, Main and Whitney streets. The plan included underground parking or an above-ground parking structure to make up for loss of parking.
Reeder and Landis frequently referred to a “public-private partnership” between the city and LASC in the objective to place a theater downtown. Most cities have theaters located in their downtowns, Reeder said, and the current 100-seat Bus Barn Theater in the city’s civic center is too small and rickety to meet theater needs.
“There’s no lobby,” Reeder said. “The restrooms are for the playing fields and they look like they’re for the playing fields when you’re in them.”
Los Altos has held theater productions out of Bus Barn for 48 years, Reeder said. Los Altos Stage Company itself is celebrating its 30th year.
Envisioned is a theater of approximately 160 seats at approximately 13,000 to 14,000 square feet. In addition to Los Altos Stage Company plays, uses could include community events, classes, movies and other performing arts productions.
Landis described the new theater as a “community hub for arts and culture. With this building, we will be able to engage more people in more ways.”
A future with a downtown theater means numerous positive outcomes, Landis said, including bigger theater productions and large audiences.
“It will increase civic pride and benefit local businesses,” he said. “This new theater will become a destination and a source of civic pride that attracts broader segments of the community to participate, and increases foot traffic in the downtown area. It’ll create a seamless experience for theater goers to go to look at businesses, restaurants and bars.”
In part, the community’s positive reception to community theater bodes well for a larger theater.
“This primary market (according to consultants) is very strong with high inclination and high resources to support performing arts,” Landis said. “They also looked at our current database of subscribers and donors, and found that it’s formed a strong basis from which to build forward both audiences and supporters for such a project.”
LASC leaders have been working with San Francisco-based consultants BuildingBlox over the past year to determine the community’s financial appetite for such a theater.
“We built up a list for them of over 200 people that we thought should be interested in this,” Reeder said.
After interviewing key potential donors, the firm’s conclusion is that $9 million to $12 million could be raised for the theater. But Reeder acknowledged that lead gifts in the $5 million range weren’t immediately forthcoming.
“They thought that if we didn’t have a lead gift, that it would be a huge challenge to somehow get the community to come up with that the $25 million total cost,” Reeder noted. “The first question, perspective donors ask is, who else is doing it?”
Also noted was the need for LASC to hire professionals to tackle the project.
“They found that the organization had the motivation and the experience and the leadership in order to undertake such a campaign, but needed to increase its human resources, its staff and its board members in order to tackle a campaign which will become a dominant activity of the organization if it goes forward,” Landis said.
Thus the development director, or fundraising professional, needed full-time “to manage the campaign and to guide the existing staff and board members in order to implement the campaign,” he said. “If we get the support of the city council, we anticipate that the capital campaign, after the hiring of the director, will take a minimum of two years to complete.”
The new theater proposal has met with some opponents who feel the project will divert funds from other needed city projects. They’ve also bemoaned the loss of a downtown parking plaza in order to build the theater.
But Reeder and Landis told their LACC audience the theater-loving public – and current and past councils – have thought differently.
“In all our interactions with several city councils, they have encouraged us to continue,” Reeder said. “They have not said, ‘This is crazy. Forget about it.’ They’ve said, ‘Keep going.’ It’s not just a pipe dream.”
