There is no money in the kitty to effect needed repairs and spruce up the Auburn Avenue Theater, and given the state of the economy there probably won’t be for several years.
But that didn’t stop members of the city’s Planning and Community Development Committee on Monday from taking a careful look at Seattle-based Barnett Schorr Architect’s ideas for an estimated $3 million overhaul of the theater.
Referring to a photograph taken at the movie theater’s grand opening in the 1940s, replete with a spotlight and nattily-dressed theater goers, the firm’s founder, Bud Schorr, let slip some of his hopes for the building.
“They dressed up to go to a movie here … and I think that there is a possibility to bring that alive in this facility,” Schorr said.
City officials believe that, too.
The city has been leasing the theater since early 2007, convinced it is nicely situated to be part of the revitalization of the downtown core and to become a hot spot for musical performances, musical theater, dance, dramas, comedies. They also believe that the theater could be influential in supporting businesses and services that thrive on nighttime activities and draw new development downtown.
But Schorr said that at the moment, the 103-year-old, masonry-and-timber built structure is not in shape to make that happen.
“The location is right, the condition of the existing building is wrong for the Auburn Avenue Theater to draw a substantial and loyal audience,” Schorr wrote in a report issued last spring. “Our architectural firm and our team of consultants were engaged to provide a preliminary study to determine if ‘a silk purse can be made out of a sow’s ear.’”
Schorr’s vision for that miraculous pig-to-purse transformation include:
• A proscenium-framed thrust stage
• A state-of-the-art theater and sound system flexible enough to stage intimate chamber music programs or Broadway musicals
• A state-of-the-art curtain and stage rigging system
• A green room space that can accommodate a cast of 16
• One dressing room for men and one for women, each with an adjacent bathroom
• A lobby space to allow the theater patrons to see and be seen, creating a social atmosphere of mixing and meeting during intermissions. This new lobby layout would open a portion to the full height of the roof.
• New stage and backstage spaces
• A space that civic groups can rent for gatherings of 30 or 300 and that local businesses can use for meeting or multimedia presentations
• A space that works for a film series or a lecture series
• Six bathroom stalls plus three lavoratories and 12-lineal feet of mirror for the ladies room.
To make this happen, the theater will need a lot of fixing.
According to the report, the building, which has served as a horse stable, bus barn, movie house, former dinner theater over the course of its long life, is in fair to poor structural condition, with signs of settlement apparent in the cracking and displacement in the concrete walls and in the unevenness of the roof ridge.
“Repairs of walls at the northeast corner may be related to past earthquake damage,” the report asserts. “Several of the trusses in the theater have been repaired where they bear on the concrete walls. The repairs appear to be the result of long-term wood root in the ends of the trusses. The unevenness of the roof structure may also be a result of wood rot in the trusses.”
The report also found that city repairs initiated in 2007 only addressed the localized damage at the ends of the trusses and made no attempt to address the overall problems of the 103-year-old roof, which, it continues, probably does not meet current building codes. And given the age and style of construction, the theater is not expected to perform well in a significant earthquake.
