City awards contract for Auburn Avenue Theater project
Published 11:04 am Friday, April 24, 2026
The City of Auburn has awarded to Marpac Construction of Seattle the $11.3 million contract to build the Auburn Avenue Theater project.
Work should start in May and wrap by early 2027, City Senior Project Engineer Matt Larson said April 21.
“We are in the process of executing the contract … and we are getting all the necessary documents together in order to sign the contract,” Larson said.
Marpac was one of eight contractors that submitted bids on the project. The city selected Marpac because it had the lowest responsible bid, which state law requires. The contract award amount is about 5 percent below what the city had earlier estimated.
To fully appreciate what’s about to start coming together, it’s helpful to recall what the project will replace. The former Auburn Avenue Theater was built in 1926 as a bus depot. Over time, it served as a movie theater and a playhouse. The city razed the building in 2024 because of structural damage associated with the demolition of the burned remnants of the Max House Apartments.
Flanked to the north by the Postmark Center for the Arts, the future Auburn Avenue Theater is meant to act as a community hub of arts and culture, a magnet to draw people into downtown Auburn to catch live performances and spend money.
“We were tasked with creating a theater that would use the same programming we had at the original theater, obviously with new, upgraded amenities, and more efficient function of the space,” Larson said on an earlier occasion. “It did have some inefficiencies, specifically, a [space-limited] back-of-the-house that no one really got to see, and very cramped spaces. The theater itself was … a creative use of space, we’ll say that.”
In addition, the previous concessions area was too small, and the performers did not have their own restrooms to change into their costumes, so they shared them with theater patrons. The big difference between old and new, however, is that the new space has been designed specifically to be a theater.
Although the orientation changes, the overall footprint is not that much larger. It’s just a more organized use of the space, city officials say. With respect to size, the new theater will add about 1,200 square feet more to the overall footprint than the old theater, while the seating capacity will increase by about 50 seats. There will be a more robust concession area, an actual green room for performers to rest and relax after the performance, larger dressing rooms with direct access to bathrooms, rethought production and support areas, and a more inviting, open lobby space with tall, clear glass windows.
The theater plaza parcel and downtown park were identified as an ideal and important location for public art, highlighting the site as a community hub of arts and culture in downtown Auburn.
But it would be shorting the $2.1 million project to think of it as a theater only, as it will also create downtown park, just east of the theater. The park will incorporate public artwork, and provide an ideal gathering space with an overarching metal umbrella called “The Gathering Tree” designed by Washington artist John Fleming.
The park will provide an amenity that Auburn residents have never had: a centralized open green space in the heart of downtown, connecting the theater to the Postmark, East Main Street, and the recently completed B Street Plaza.
The city tapped the initial $967,000 from a King County Conservation Futures grant, with $717,000 of it already spent to acquire the property and for demolition of the comic book store at the east end to open up room. The city has already been reimbursed for this money.
Among the remaining funding sources are a $250,000 direct appropriation from the state, park impact fees, and beyond those, it has cobbled together some funds remaining from other downtown projects.
