On March 25, 1955, renowned American architect Frank Lloyd Wright was invited to San Diego by a group of city and community leaders to give a speech at the House of Hospitality in Balboa Park on the topic of “What a Civic Theater Could Mean to Community Development.”
Seven hundred people packed the building that evening to hear the 85-year-old Wright — who built 30 theaters during his long career — talk about the importance of theater and culture in society.
“San Diego’s desire for civic theater is a sign of a cultural awakening,” he told the capacity crowd. “Civilization is only a way of life. It never lasts without a culture, and we have one of the ugliest in the world I ever saw. Let us make it beautiful.”
As early as 1925, San Diego’s movers and shakers talked about building a theater as part of a future downtown concourse. But with Wright’s encouragement, a determined City Council and a sizeable group of philanthropic donors, plans finally began to take shape for the planned development, which would have a showpiece theater crowning the project as its cultural jewel.
In January, the San Diego Civic Theatre marked it 60th anniversary. Since it opened on Jan. 12, 1965, the theater has continuously operated as the county’s largest indoor theater. It is the longtime home of San Diego Opera, as well as Broadway San Diego, which presents touring musical theater productions like “Wicked,” which is now in residence for a sold-out, 3-1/2-week run.
The Civic Theatre is also a resource for dozens of other presenters, including La Jolla Music Society, local ballet companies, concert and comedy promoters, and more.
Last year alone, the Civic Theatre hosted more than 300,000 ticket-buyers for more than 140 performances, contributing $23 million to the local economy and $1.5 million in local and state tax revenues. The theater also provides 348 full-time jobs.
Yet despite its popularity with arts groups and ticket-buyers, the Civic Theatre’s future was nearly snuffed out. It was one of several Community Concourse buildings targeted by the city in 2022 for possible redevelopment as part of its proposed Civic Core Revitalization Plan.
In December, the city abandoned its proposal due to budget cuts and a general lack of interest from developers. But in the meantime, arts groups and foundations rallied to celebrate the value of the Civic to the community and point out how impossible it would be to re-create a downtown theater of its size in today’s inflation-wracked economic and fundraising climate.
Steven Johnson is the vice president of business development and marketing for San Diego Theatres, the nonprofit foundation that manages both the Civic Theatre and the 100-year-old Balboa Theatre a few blocks away. He said the Civic Theatre has a value far beyond its steel and concrete, seats and stage.
“It represents the heartbeat of San Diego’s cultural community,” Johnson said. “It’s a gathering place for people from all walks of life who live in the region. It offers an opportunity to see art in multiple forms and formats in a way you can’t replicate … Even in a city that has grown the number of venues from what it was 10 years ago with stunning additions, the Civic remains an anchor and cornerstone of the city’s cultural landscape.”
In honor of the Civic’s 60th anniversary, we have explored the building’s roots, construction, past, present and future.
‘Today the sky’s the limit’
On Jan. 3, 1964, San Diego Mayor Charles Dail triggered a demolition ball to officially launch the groundbreaking of the Downtown San Diego City Centre, a three-block construction project bounded by A street to the north, C Street to the south, First Avenue to the west and Third Avenue to the east. The property would become home to a new city hall building, a two-story exhibit hall, a 1,000-space parking garage, a large theater and a landscaped central pedestrian plaza to connect them all.
Over the next two years, 60,000 tons of earth were excavated to build the project, with the Civic Theatre being the final piece of the puzzle. The San Diego Concourse exhibit hall (later renamed Golden Hall) opened Sept. 13, 1964, and City Hall opened three months later. At a grand opening celebration on Sept. 15, the project builder Morley H. Golden celebrated the moment saying “today the sky’s the limit.”
The Civic Theatre, designed by the three-architect team of Lloyd Ruocco, William F. Rosser and Seldon V. Kennedy Jr., didn’t open on time with the other buildings due to construction delays. The $4 million project involved 80 tons of structural steel and 16,414 cubic yards of concrete. The Civic featured a stage 100 feet wide and 50 feet deep with a 100-foot-tall fly loft for scenery and an orchestra pit that could accommodate up to 100 musicians.
The four-level, 3,000-seat auditorium was built so that no audience member was more than 140 feet from the stage and the rows of seats were terraced at a steep rake, so everyone had an unobstructed view.
An acoustics expert from Lincoln Center was hired to create pin-drop perfect sound in the auditorium, since symphonies and operas perform without amplification. This process involved using sound-reflecting paint on the walls of the upper balcony and installing 37 “acoustic clouds,” which were sound-reflecting steel teacup-like structures suspended from the ceiling by 80-foot cables.
San Diego Union arts critic Olga Maynard wrote in 1965 that their design for the Civic was strongly reminiscent of the just-completed New York State Theater, a 2,500-seat performing arts center at Manhattan’s Lincoln Center (the building is now named the David H. Koch Theater and it serves as the home of the New York City Ballet).
The theater’s most visually stunning design feature was its Grand Salon, an open three-story atrium lobby that extends from the second to the fourth floor. Today, that lobby’s most recognized feature is its massive chandelier, which was made with 52,000 Bavarian crystals. Donors had to raise money for the spectacular $36,347 light fixture on their own, so it wasn’t installed until a year after the theater opened.
On Jan. 12, 1965, the San Diego Civic Theatre opened to the public with a sold-out performance by the San Diego Symphony conducted by Earl Bernard Murray with vocalists Dorothy Kirsten and Brian Sullivan. Four days later, the L.A. Philharmonic orchestra, under the baton of Zubin Mehta, made its debut at the Civic.
In the following months, the Civic played host to comedian-singer Jimmy Durante, the London Symphony, the Japan Philharmonic, a touring theater production of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” and San Diego City Schools’ 50th commencement ceremony for 1,194 high school graduates.
But the most notable Civic Theatre debut that year was by San Diego Opera. For 15 years, the San Diego Opera Guild had operated as a presenting organization, selling subscription tickets for touring opera productions. But with the creation of the Civic Theatre, the company transformed in 1965 into a production company under its first general director, Walter Herbert. It officially debuted with Puccini’s “La bohème” on May 5, 1965, and it has remained in residence there ever since.
“Our histories are deeply intertwined,” said David Bennett, General Director of San Diego Opera. “As the only venue in San Diego capable of hosting grand opera, the Civic Theatre remains essential to our shared future.”
Another arts organization that came to call the Civic home was Broadway San Diego, which started out in 1976 as San Diego Playgoers and first presented touring plays and musicals at downtown’s Spreckels Theatre. In 1986, the organization relocated its presentations to the Civic Theatre and in 2001 it changed its name to Broadway San Diego, a Nederlander Organization. The company presents a year-round subscription season of touring shows.
Vanessa Ybarra Davis, Vice President of Broadway San Diego, said the Civic Theatre is intricately tied to her company’s identity.
“This milestone celebrates more than just history,” Ybarra Davis said of the theater’s 60th anniversary. “It honors the Civic Theatre’s role in shaping San Diego’s cultural identity and inspiring generations of theatergoers.”
Modernizing for the future
On Aug. 1, 1993, the city turned the management of the theater over to the San Diego Convention Center Corp., as a way to save $1.1 million in staff expenses. SDCCC later established the nonprofit San Diego Theatres to serve as the building’s operator in 2003.
Under San Diego Theatres’ management contract with the city, capital improvements to the building — like installing sprinkler heads for fire safety — are the city’s responsibility. But interior and exterior upgrades are paid for by San Diego Theatres, which helps cover these costs through a facility fee on each ticket.
Over the past 60 years, the Civic has maintained the same physical profile with periodic updates, including updates to its acoustics and interior in 1974 and 1994.
Renovations are expensive, but nothing compared to the projected cost of replacing the Civic. Johnson said it would likely be 100 times more expensive today than its original cost.
An example is the Perelman Performing Arts Center in Lower Manhattan, which opened in September 2023. The cube-like structure cost $560 million to build and accommodates a maximum of 1,200 people. That project was also made possible by two well-heeled donors — Michael Bloomberg and Ron Perelman — who contributed a combined $205 million.
While San Diego’s most prolific philanthropists — Irwin Jacobs and his late wife, Joan — have given tens of millions of dollars to help build arts facilities countywide, it would be challenging coming up with the donor pool necessary to a new Civic Theatre today.
“We’ve asked the question what it would cost to build the Civic today,” Johnson said. “Just to take the current shell and upgrade it would be close to $250 million. A brand new theater would be in the realm of $450 to $500 million and then figuring out how to operate the current building and find a current location for a new building? That would be tragic. It makes you wonder if that’s an era that’s gone by.”
Civic visitors attending “Wicked” this month will see several recent updates San Diego Theatres has made to the building. They include a new lobby bar that replaced the original box office (paper tickets can now be picked up at San Diego Concourse/Golden Hall).
There’s also new landscaping on the plaza and a new customer check-in process. Johnson said that in the next month or two, plans will be announced for even more improvements to the theater’s interior.
Until recently, the Concourse/Golden Hall building was being used as a city-run homeless shelter, and of the unhoused community continue to sleep and camp in the plaza area. Johnson said plans are under way to refresh and activate the plaza to make it more welcoming and safe for attendees.
“We are exploring ways to expand the attendee experience so it’s a good experience, not one where you have to make your way through a difficult environment,” he said. “We want to make the area visually more compelling.”
A TIMELINE OF THE SAN DIEGO CIVIC THEATRE’S HISTORY
This historical timeline was compiled by San Diego Theatres.
1925: The origin of the San Diego’s vision to build a concourse building and civic auditorium was first suggested but denied over the net 30 years due to lackof public funding.
1955: A group of prominent San Diegans brought Frank Lloyd Wright to San Diego to make a presentation to the San Diego Hospitality Society on why “SanDiego Needs a Civic Theatre.”
1962: The San Diego City Council approved a revitalization effort titled Downtown San Diego City Centre, which would include a new City Hall, a convention center (now the San Diego Concourse/Golden Hall), a parking garage, and a Civic Theatre. The budget for the entire project was just over $21 million.
1965: Though more than four months behind schedule, the Civic Theatre hosts a pre-opening VIP Gala on January 9th. The official opening is a concert by the San Diego Symphony on Jan. 12, with a sold-out house of nearly 3,000 spectators, followed by four more days of celebration. In the early years of the project, westbound B Street didn’t terminate at Third Avenue. Instead it continued in front of the theater, then took a right turn at the concourse and connected with northbound Second Avenue at A Street.
1965: The San Diego Opera opened its inaugural season at the Civic Theatre on May 5, with a production of Giacomo Puccini’s “La bohème” starring soprano Maralin Niska and tenor Nicholas Di Virgilio.Maralin Niska as Mimì and Nicholas Di Virgilio as Rodolfo in San Diego Opera’s first production, Puccini’s “La boheme,” which opened May 5, 1965, at the newly opened San Diego Civic Theatre. (San Diego Opera)
1966: A civilian effort, led by Morley H. Golden — a prominent San Diegan and owner of the construction company that built the Civic Theatre — began raisingfunds for a one-of-a-kind chandelier for the theater’s grand salon. More than $36,000 was raised to buy the multitiered light fixture which features 52,000 Bavarian crystals. In recent years, the chandelier was updated with LED bulbs.When the San Diego Civic Theatre opened on Jan. 12, 1965, its Grand Salon atrium didn’t have its signature multi-tier chandelier. After a fundraising effort, it was purchased and installed in 1966. (San Diego Theatres)1973: Concert by Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt
1974: The theater underwent a significant acoustic continue its reputation for acoustic excellence for operas, Broadway musicals and more.
1979: In a resolution, the San Diego City Council named the Civic Theatre grand salon the “Beverly Sills Salon” in honor of the soprano who appeared at the Civic in San Diego Opera’s “Daughter of the Regiment” in 1973 and in “Die Fledermaus” with Dame Joan Sutherland in 1980.
Fall 1980: American Institute of Architects, San Diego Chapter, American Society of Interior Designers, American Planning Association, and the Association ofEnvironmental Professionals presented the San Diego Civic Theatre “An Orchid Award” nominated by the public.
1982: Miles Davis plays the Civic Theatre.
1986: Broadway San Diego, a Nederlander Organization, permanently moves its season of touring theater shows from the smaller Spreckels Theatre to the Civic Theatre.
1993: City of San Diego transfers Civic Theatre responsibility from City’s Property Department to San Diego Convention Center Corp. A decade later, SDCCC would establish the nonprofit San Diego Theatres to run the Civic.
2004: Actor Patrick Swayze s the national touring production of “Chicago” at the Civic Theatre, starring as Billy Flynn.
2011: During Comic-Con, the Civic Theatre hosted the red carpet premiere of the film “Cowboys and Aliens,” welcoming celebrities like Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde, Jon Favreau and Steven Spielberg.
2012: The theater’s original red carpet was replaced by with the red carpeting you see today. The inspiration for the design came from a malachite stone.
2012: Olympics gymnast-turned-actor Cathy Rigby performed at the Civic as Peter Pan in her farewell tour of the musical “Peter Pan.”
2022: In May, the Civic Theatre hosted the world premiere of “Top Gun: Maverick,” with appearances by Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell and Lewis Pullman, and producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
2023: In June, Diana Ross performed at the Civic Theatre as part of her Music Legacy Tour.
2024: The historic ticket booth in the lobby is replaced by an open-concept bar and concession stand. The West Plaza outside the theatre, is updated withnew planters, exterior lighting and a small exterior stage to enhance the patron pre-show experience.
2025: The San Diego Civic Theatre celebrates its 60-year anniversary.
Notable Performers and Performances at the Civic Theatre over the years:Frank Sinatra, Diana Ross, Renée Fleming, Dame Joan Sutherland, Jerry Seinfeld, Conan O’Brien, Luther Vandross, Jerry Lewis, Patti LaBelle, Tony Bennett, Carole King, Bob Dylan, Robin Williams, David Byrne, and Bruce Springsteen.
