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Restoration of The Plaza Theatre in Palm Springs isn’t scheduled to start until next month, but a company has already been selected to manage daily operations at the historic downtown structure once it returns to business.
Oak View Group, owner and operator of the 11,000-seat Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert, will manage, find sponsorships and secure entertainment for the city-owned facility at 128 S. Palm Canyon Drive, according to the Palm Springs Plaza Theatre Foundation.
Renovations of the 800-seat theater are scheduled to start in early March and expected to be completed by the fall of 2025. Restoration of the facility, which opened in 1936 and has been shut down since 2014, is expected to cost approximately $26 million.
Announced Feb. 13, the agreement between Oak View Group and the nonprofit foundation took about six months to complete, said J.R. Roberts, foundation president.
“The talks went well, but it was hard work,” said Roberts, a former Palm Springs city council member. “It can be difficult to get the language right in that kind of negotiation.”
Both Oak View Group, which last year donated $1 million to the restoration project, and the the foundation have agreements with the city, much of the talks between those two entities dealt with making certain their management agreement didn’t interfere with either of those agreements.
Oak View Group will keep 20 percent of the revenue from the sponsorships it brings in. Revenue generated by sponsorships secured by the foundation will go into the foundation’s coffers, according to Roberts.
Palm Springs has donated $2 million toward the restoration. The city has also fronted the foundation $20 million, half of which must be paid back within three years. The remaining $10 million will be paid back in the form ticket sales, revenue from sponsorships and transit occupancy taxes.
The “front money” – paying for goods and services in advance – is not considered part of the foundation’s fundraising effort.
“That’s being treated as a separate category,” Roberts said. “It’s an investment the city is making in its own building in order to get the project started.”
Once it’s reopened, the theater is expected to attract patrons who will pump more money into the city’s downtown retail establishments, especially hotels and restaurants.
So far, the foundation has raised about $16 million, including a $5 million donation from David C. Lee, foundation board member and longtime Palm Springs resident.
Unless someone tops that donation, the restored theater will be called the David C. Lee Plaza Theatre.
“If someone wants to write us a check for $10 million, we’ll name the theater after them,” Roberts said.
Some of the Plaza Theatre will avoid landing on the scrap heap. Five hundred of its 800 seats will be sent to various theaters, including several in Florida, the rest given to private collectors.
“We didn’t want them ending up in the landfill,” Roberts said.
For now, the foundation’s 18-member board of directors will focus on raising another $10 million to pay for construction, contingencies.
Roberts, who is semi-retired, began gathering support for the theater restoration in 2019. He calls the effort a “labor of love,” but admits to having had second thoughts about his commitment one year after he began.
“When COVID hit I was very concerned,” Roberts said. “Streaming was getting more popular, and I was afraid theaters were going to go away altogether, but that didn’t happen. People still like to go out, sit in the dark and eat popcorn. I think that tells you a lot about people. They need that shared shared experience.”
The foundation envisioned the city going back to running the theater once it was back in shape, but about one year ago Palm Springs officials suggested that the foundation manage the restored theater.
“That sounded like a lot of work,” Roberts said. “I didn’t know how I felt about that.”
After some discussion, the board decided to approach Denver-based Oak View Group, a global sports and entertainment company founded in 2015 by sports and entertainment executive Tim Leiweke and music industry mogul Irving Azoff.
Oak View Group operates more than 400 arenas, stadiums, performing arts centers and convention centers worldwide, including the Acrisure Arena. That facility is home to the Coachella Valley Firebirds of the American Hockey League, an affiliate of the Seattle Kragen of the National Hockey League.
“We (Palm Springs) already had a good relationship with Oak View Group, so they were the logical people to talk to,” Roberts said. “They operate a lot of venues internationally, and they got the Acrisure Arena built in about 18 months, which was a minor miracle.”
Now, Oak View Group will oversee a much smaller venue that has been around for awhile.
The 88-year-old theater opened with the premiere of Camille staring Greta Garbo, who reportedly snuck into the theater and watched from a hiding place, so overwhelming was the gathering of fans and media outside.
Eventually, the Plaza Theatre earned national attention, hosting shows by Jack Benny and Frank Sinatra, among other A-list entertainers at the time. Its live radio broadcast of The Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show also raised the venue’s profile.
Years later, the theater was also made part of the annual Palm Springs International Film Festival, which then-Mayor Sonny Bono started in 1989. It was also home to the Palm Springs Follies, a popular vaudeville-type show that shut down with the theater 10 years ago.
Once it’s restored, The Plaza Theatre is expected to return to the film festival’s list of venues.
Meanwhile, the foundation will keep trying to raise money.
The $5 million donation was a calculated move meant to get the fundraising going again in the aftermath of the pandemic, Lee said.
“Before COVID, the fundraising was going great,” said Lee, a Hollywood writer-producer and a foundation board member. “But then COVID hit and immediately no one was donating to anything, especially something like a theater restoration. The whole fundraising effort collapsed.”
The announcement of the partnership with Oak View Group agreement was a personal high point for Lee, who said he is anxious to see The Plaza Theatre returned to its former glory.
“When I saw the release on the agreement with Oak View Group, it was a big moment,” Lee said. “It told me that this is really going to happen.”
