Renovations to auditorium set to start in early 2020

OAKLAND » The city’s historic Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, which has sat darkened at the western edge of Lake Merritt for 14 years, could come back to life in 2021, developers say.

In its heyday, the 215,000-square-foot arena — originally known as the Oakland Civic Auditorium — hosted Martin Luther King Jr., as well as performances by Elvis Presley, James Brown, Bob Marley and the Wailers, the Grateful Dead and others, along with roller derbys and symphony concerts.

But by the mid-2000s, promoters were booking fewer shows at the venue, and the city closed it in 2005. It took Oakland another 10 years to commission a developer to renovate the building, and another four years for the developer to iron out a plan.

This month, Oakland City Council unanimously approved Orton Development’s $64.5 million renovation plan and allow the Emeryville developer to lease the building for up to 99 years.

The project will get underway early next year and is expected to be finished by fall 2021, project manager David Dial said via email. The developer is renaming the 105-year-old building the Oakland Civic — a nod to its original name.

“This is a real opportunity to serve Oakland’s art and culture organizations and to create a place where Oakland residents can come together to gather and build community,” said Nikki Fortunato Bas, the city council member whose district includes the auditorium.

The agreement includes turning the arena foyer into office spaces for local nonprofits and restoring the Calvin Simmons Theatre on the west side of the building.

The project had faced opposition from some arts and community groups whose leaders said they doubted that Orton’s proposal for offices in the arena foyer would actually serve the arts community. Though the project proposal called for the offices to be rented by nonprofit organizations, critics said the rent would probably be too high for small nonprofits.

A group of organizations that included the East Side Arts Alliance, Asian Pacific-Islander Environmental Network and the Black Arts Movement Business District Community Development Corporation of Oakland filed an appeal of the planning commission’s approval of the project in March, but scrapped it after Orton agreed to additional terms.

Those include providing a large chunk of office and rehearsal space to small, local nonprofits at fixed rents significantly below market rate, and creating community oversight boards to guide the building’s operations.

“It gives the community the ability to hold the developer accountable,” Ayodele Nzinga, director of the Lower Bottom Playaz theater company and leader of the appeal effort, said in an interview. “This developer may have gotten the approval to privatize this venue for the next 99 years, but in a very different way than he might have imagined.”

Orton will donate $100,000 to a yet-to-be-creatednonprofit called“Friends of the Simmons Theatre” that will create a community access program for schools, according to the agreement. Orton also will donate $75,000 to an anti-displacement fund that will be managed by the East Bay Community Fund.

“This project should be the centerpiece of making our city’s goals around equity, inclusivity and preventing the displacement of our artists and longtime residents, particularly black and brown artists and longtime residents of color,” Bas said at the July 9 City Council meeting.

In addition to the office and rehearsal spaces, the building also will feature storage for artists, as well as shops and a restaurant with outdoor seating and a bar on the first floor.

The historic Calvin Simmons Theatre — named after the first African-American conductor of a major symphony who led the Oakland symphony in the late 1970s and early 1980s — on the west side of the building will be reopened with rearranged seating, three new box seating areas and new dressing rooms, according to the proposal.

The north facade of the building, which includes historic cornices, awnings and signage, will be preserved. The doors will be replaced and a 9,500-square-foot, 7-foot-tall raised terrace will be built over the concrete staircases and used as an outdoor public seating area.

Orton also wants to put a new illuminated marquee sign on the roof reminiscent of one from 1949.

The lease agreement calls for Orton to share half of the building’s revenue with the city after it has recouped its investment, which is expected to be in 17 years, according to a report from the city’s economic and workforce development department director Mark Sawicki. Sawicki projected the total annual revenue after 17 years to be $1.37 million.

Randolph Belle, a local businessman who had pitched an alternate renovation plan to the city that would have included restoring the building as an arena, sees Orton’s plan as a missed opportunity.