Reviving Penn Theater
Drawing from music and history
For the past two years, developer Steve Mason has sought to revive a longneglected retail strip along NW 12 and Pennsylvania Avenue by filling it with a carefully curated diverse mix of tenants.
The shopping center was once part of a bustling Classen-10-Penn neighborhood, anchored by the Penn Theater. But as the area’s fortunes sank in the 1980s, so did the retail strip. The theater closed, as did Ouy Lin, a longtime popular Chinese restaurant. By the late 1990s, the buildings were crumbling and reduced to housing a junk shop.
Initial exterior redevelopment was launched a few years ago by former owner Scott Smith. Mason and partner Aimee Ahpeatone bought the property in 2015, finished the interiors and attracted a mix that includes a Mexican restaurant, a blackowned barbershop, an artists’ hub, a diverse bar, a tattoo shop, and photo studio.
“We have a diversity of tenants with what they sell, with their ethnic and cultural backgrounds,” Mason said. “I feel like this may be the most diverse shopping center in the city.”
Until this spring, however, one space eluded Mason: the old theater.
“Theaters are very difficult,” Mason said. “We have this one and the Yale in Capitol Hill. Theaters are big. They are not made for offices. So we’ve been looking for what to do with it. We have limited parking. When it came to using it for offices or for restaurants, it just wasn’t the right fit.”
And then John Dunning called.
Dunning has spent most of his adult life happily moving from one venture to another. His earliest years were spent with a commune — yes, the type of communes filled with music loving, long-haired, God-loving hippies.
And over the years, Dunning has met folk, country, blues and rock legends, operated a legendary music venue, rescued the Zoo Amphitheater, salvaged remnants of historic downtown Oklahoma City and most recently, accidentally started up a popular record shop.
Dunning and his Trolley Stop Records, it turns out, is the missing piece for Mason’s theater. And as he has the past half century, Dunning happily stepped in with passion for music and history.
Just as Mason was talking with his broker about what to do with the theater, Dunning called with a pitch that quickly charmed Mason: a combined record shop and live music venue infused with the city’s musical and architectural past.
“John brings a history of Oklahoma City,” Mason said. “He is a scavenger. And what he scavenges for from buildings is incredible. He knows our city’s history. And he can also share every possible detail of every concert he has seen his entire life.”
Chasing the music
Dunning’s love affair with music and history began when he saw the Dave Clark Five at the Municipal Auditorium (now the Civic Center Music Hall) in 1964. He then caught a performance by The Who. He chased the music and joined Firewind, a commune that eventually took an old church at 2472 NW 39 and transformed it into a music venue.
The former church, built in 1940, was in rough shape. Over the years it had been turned into a health food restaurant, two nightclubs, and yet another church.
Dunning was born in 1951 as the heyday of the romanticized old downtown Oklahoma City was coming to an end. As the commune set up the Prairie Lady concert hall, Dunning discovered an abundance of architectural relics and fixtures were set to be destroyed along with the hundreds of buildings being demolished as part of urban renewal.
“We tore off the front of the church and added a new one,” Dunning said. “It was Victorian, very old looking. And we were at the height of urban renewal. It was open season. You could just get what you wanted. Nobody cared. We got lights, toilets, sinks. Everything we used at Prairie Lady was from 1910 or older. The chandelier we got from Midwest Theater.”
The venue wasn’t very big — it held only about 300 people. But it attracted some big names and left some epic tales. Emmylou Harris made the Prairie Lady a stop on her first tour. Hoyt Axton made numerous visits, as did Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee.
John Lee Hooker, Taj Mahal, Leon Redbone, Lightning Hopkins and Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary also filled the former church. Roger McGuinn, former lead singer for The Byrds, would later recall finding God at the Prairie Lady.
McGuinn had completed his performance, fell asleep and when he awoke from his drugged stupor, he was greeted by a man grinning at him, saying “The Lord just told me you’re gonna come to Him.”
The Prairie Lady lasted only a few years and had already shut down when it was destroyed in June 1980 by a fire that was set at the neighboring Viva Morot Hotel at 2460 NW 39.
The commune had moved on, bringing music back to the Zoo Amphitheater. That venture also was short lived.
“It was in shambles,” Dunning said. “We built a stage and ramps, and we got it cleaned up. We had a lot of good shows. But the zoo decided they couldn’t have a commune running the place, so they booted us out.”
Dunning spent the 1980s on the postcard and collectibles circuit. He continued to dabble with an old garage at 9100 N Western Ave. that he bought in 1973 and initially used for storing items salvaged from downtown and other antiques and collectibles gathered along the way.
Dunning again used some of the salvaged items to build up the property. The flooring of what would become the Western Trails Trading Post consisted of wood salvaged from an old department store. When his friend Tom Kitchens was looking for something to do, the venue was expanded into a Route 66 style trading post where visitors could browse racks of vintage postcards, souvenirs, books and signs.
Vinyl records
Dunning never planned on opening a record store, especially in the digital 21st century when vinyl records were presumed to be a relic of the past.
A customer at the Trading Post asked Dunning if he would look at a collection of old books. The books were in an old house in a blighted neighborhood west of downtown. The customer brought out one box after another. Dunning wasn’t impressed.
“They were pretty ratty,” Dunning said. “But there was a shelf of records, and I offered to buy the records. And then he started bringing in more boxes. We went into an adjoining house and it was full of records. There were four houses that were filled with these records. I was there for 30 days, morning to dark, getting out the records.”
Dunning’s timing was good; at the end of the 30 days the homes were bulldozed.
A friend owned a retail space at 1807 N Classen Blvd., formerly home to Joey’s Pizzeria, and Dunning was given a chance to use it as a pop-up shop to sell the inventory. Before long, Trolley Stop Record Shop was born.
When Kitchens died three years ago, Dunning ended operations at Western Trails Trading Post and devoted his time to the small but increasingly popular record shop. Over the last couple of years he has tried to bring live music as well, but the venue isn’t big enough to accommodate Dunning’s dual passions.
“I was wanting to do shows,” Dunning said. “We’ve had them at the other shop, but it’s crowded. I needed a bigger spot.”
Dunning says he is not abandoning the shop on Classen, though it may evolve into another concept. He searched around town before seeing a “For Lease” sign at the old Penn Theater.
Dunning and Mason clicked.
Another venture
Dunning did research and discovered an image of William Penn was used in early advertisements for the theater. He returned the Penn Theater along with the logo back to the top of the front facade. The Trolley Stop Record Shop was painted below the theater name.
Wayne Buckner, an old friend and musician who played at the Prairie Lady, visited and offered to help.
“He walked it and he loved it,” Dunning said. “He wanted to build the stage. And on the second day after that, he had the blueprint.”
Dunning provided the materials that included wood siding from a twostory Victorian home that was torn down in the Britton neighborhood and oak floor salvaged from a home cleared in Nichols Hills.
Buckner completed the framing but was unable to keep up with the physical demand of completing the stage. Rich Walls, a Trolley Stop customer and carpenter, found out about the project and was between jobs. Once again, fate smiled on Dunning.
Dunning is also assured the performance space in the theater will be completed by July.
“Rich’s girlfriend visited and brought lunch,” Dunning said. “She said he had asked her to marry him.”
Looking around, the couple quickly decided they would marry on the stage being built by Walls. The wedding date in July is set.
Dunning doesn’t have any plans showing the floor plan for the combined record shop and music venue. Shelves of records will be set up along double walls extending from each side of the former theater. Smaller racks with wheels will be in the center of the venue so that they can be moved to create space for a couple hundred people during performances.
The timing for such an expansion coincides with a rebirth in sales of vinyl records. Forbes reported earlier this year sales are projected to hit $1 billion with 40 million records being purchased, a rate not seen since the 1980s.
For Dunning, however, it’s not so much about the money as it is seeing how records are bringing back memories and creating happy moments for his customers.
“Parents and kids, grandparents and kids, they are building a bridge, shopping together, and it creates a bond,” Dunning said. “These generations were losing out. Older and younger generations were growing apart, so I see all this as a really good thing. I’ve just had fun all my life. I’ve never worked for anyone but me. I wouldn’t work as hard as I do for anyone else but me.”