City Enters Into Negotiations With Radium Presents To Move Ambitious Project Forward
An ancient Chinese proverb holds, quite truly, that “the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” and Alameda’s Radium Presents organization took its first step in what will be a long trek indeed after The City Council approved an Exclusive Negotiating Agreement with the group to one day build a gleaming, 500 seat Performing Arts Center (PAC) at Alameda Point.
Radium’s webpage proffers the PAC with the tantalizing description that it will be “a world-class venue –the first and only Bay Area waterfront performing arts center.”
The alluring, majestic structure’s proposed construction site is on a largely vacant, two acre parcel kiddie corner from Almanac Brewing.
The goal is great, the vision is vast and the path promises to be long and windy if The PAC is to become a dream come true for the community and Radium.
The grand ideal is Alamedan, and Radium Board Chief, David Seiwald’s brainchild for what Radium Program Manager, Rachel Campos De Ivanov said was part of his “incredible heart at giving back to the community.”
The genesis of the dream came to Seiwald, an opera lover, during an Island City Opera performance in the history steeped, Classical Revival surroundings of the Alameda Elks Club some years back.
After the performance, Seiwald ran across Radium Board member, Bob Boyd and fate was on the verge of unleashing something new.
Impressed with the performance, but envisioning an upward and onward future as yet untold, Seiwald asked, “But where do you go from here?”
The response basically embraced the prospect of nowhere else, as Boyd replied, “you know, there really isn’t a place.”
Seiwald set his mind to things and, in the beginning of 2016, assembled a team of fellow board members and consultants to explore the notion of bringing about new, more than just suitable digs.
Ideas often start small and grow big when vision sets in and grabs hold of ambition along the way. It wasn’t long, before the glittery notion manifested into a full on, state of the art, 500 seat Performing Arts Center.
Paving the way, figuratively at least for now, was Radium’s move to seek the Exclusive Negotiating Agreement (ENA) just approved unanimously by the City Council on Dec. 19th.
The arrangement, in exchange for a $10,000 non-refundable payment to The City, grants Radium sole rights to develop a viable plan to get financing into place and particularize elements of a phased plan.
The ENA sets a rapidly running time clock of twelve months to provide the council with firm and viable plans. The ENA also provides for the option to attain up to two more three-month extensions, pending Council approval, if and as needed.
“That will enable us to work very closely with City Hall in negotiating a long term ‘lease to purchase’ option,” said de Ivanov.
The ENA provides time for Radium to bring attain “initial entitlements” for the project which include bringing in design consultants, bring the design to the City’s Historical Advisory Board and The Planning Board given that the PAC would entail all new construction within the boundaries of the “Historic District” of Alameda Point.
The means Radium must have its designs “honor the view corridors that work in concert and complement the historical nature of the buildings that surround,” the structure.
In short, as far as the architectural renderings for structure’s esthetic is concerned, the present must meet the past in order to bring the musical works of the past into the present.
At about the nine month mark, said de Ivanov, The ENA provides that The City and Radium have a “check in that includes a complete development plan detailing project funding to demonstrate that we have the financial chops to conclude this ambitious objective, a milestone schedule” that details what will be accomplished at various half year or so stages during and after The ENA period and, optimally extending into the final lease stage.
“That gives the city a little bit of a safety net that we can pull off the initiative,” she noted.
As is so often the case, lofty notions meet the real world dynamics of money, and this project, at least as envisioned at this time, reckons with a ballpark estimate of $120-$130 million dollars.
“Now that we have some sense of site control, we will be able to go out to other major philanthropists and other supporters of the arts in the Bay Area,” and line up support for Radium’s Capital Campaign as de Ivanov termed it.
The strategy is to align funding milestones with development milestones as getting permits, getting the site graded and then moving on to “going vertical,” she added.
That phase will involve The City and Alameda Point Partners which had set aside the 2 acre parcel for “community benefit” and which will be provide grading for a foundation pad ready for Radium’s subsequent vertical construction.
The concrete base will have to come up about three feet above ground level to be in compliance with sea level rise building requirements
“That commitment is a significant one for us, and gives us a head start with our fundraising,” by providing a kind of credibility-good faith foundation within the donor community.
Whether or not Radium will then solely bear the cost element of the long -term purchase by lease possibility or be able to work out some cost/purchase mitigations along the way will be a subject of negotiations during the ENA period.
De Ivanov indicated that no funds from The City Of Alameda will be a revenue source for the project, and bond measures are not an option at this time.
On the flip side of the funding coin is the notion that The PAC will provide increased revenues to the community and to city coffers.
“There currently is not an arts culture or entertainment center out there to complement the incredible, wonderful growing array of breweries” wineries and solid places to eat. We’ve already seen with Radium Runway that there is a spillover benefit with surrounding businesses.”
The project will create “an entertainment and cultural anchor. for Alameda Point, and those are the kinds of things that pay off in dividends,” she said.
Radium’s long-term, head consultant on the fund raising component of the plan, Greg Phillips of CSTAR Creative Stage Arts Development, counseled project leadership to hold back on putting out feelers to prospective benefactors until the group had a locked-in, project go ahead from The City.
Phillips’ track record lists forty years in performing arts management, including financial analysis, fundraising, venue design and construction and more.
Among his projects are involvements with The San Francisco Playhouse, The Sun Valley Museum Of Art, and The Princess Grace Foundation –USA.
“It’s a heavy lift, and the current construction rates have driven up the costs significantly since the inception of the project”
de Ivanov
Now Radium can say, “This has the potential to be a real project with your support, and so that vote on Tuesday has enabled us to start firing up those engines and to have those conversations which will be taking place first thing in the New Year.” De Ivanov said.
“It’s a heavy lift, and the current construction rates have driven up the costs significantly since the inception of the project, ” she said with a lightly troubled chuckle of recognition, adding that she hopes that the opportunity for philanthropy to support community performing arts has grown along with inflation.
Without naming individuals or entities, de Ivanov acknowledged that Radium does have a group of individuals at the top of “our naming list” and with others who have relationships with the Radium Board to provide a “good inroad to entertain a conversation.”
The board also brings with it a cast of stars in the Opera world whose performance prowess and involvement in the arts brings power to message.
The super nova of the group, is internationally acclaimed, and Alameda’s own Opera performer, Frederica Von Stade, also Radium’s Artistic Advisor.
“We are so pleased to have her incredible warmth and star energy as a long time champion for Radium and the energy that she adds,” said de Ivanov.
Also providing prestige power are Eileen Meredith and Bob Boyd of Alameda’ Island City Opera, who are “lending their experience and energy” along with local, Alameda West End dance Company Head Tara Pilbrow and others in the acting and performing arts world aiding the pursuit.
But the elite tier of those at the head of the project does not create a haughty ethos of cultural exclusivity.
Radium’s goal is to be fully expansive and inclusive of all kinds of performing arts, well beyond the rarified ethers of Opera.
“We really want this to be a Center that is activated day and night that has events, programs and educational experiences that appeal to a wide variety of backgrounds and audiences,”
That “absolutely” includes local schools and student performers, which Radium and AUSD have conferred about at length.
In the same way that Seiwald noted that there could be a better venue that the Elks Club so did Radium and AUSD realize that, for students and the community at large, somewhere needed to be found beyond the drab confines hosting performances held in aging structures designed for basketball, volleyball and other indoor sports or in a bland school cafeteria.
“Last year, I got the chance to see the high school play at Encinal High, and these kids were incredible, they almost brought me to tears. You’ve got to think more people would come out to see these budding, young performing artists, and perhaps more students would be inspired to perform themselves” in the vibrant domain of a modern, first rate performing arts facility.
De Ivanov knows well the financial impediments that often face local and school performing arts programs that operate on shoe-string budgets, so Radium will prepare a “rate card” to make the venue “an affordable place for our student and non-student non profits here in Alameda. This is deeply important to our mission.”
If all goes well, as things sometimes do, when it comes to timeline projections and plan execution, fund raising will take about two to three years “to get us to the point of brining in the concrete trucks” and another two or so years for following construction.
In the meantime, as part of its plan to enervate and remind the community of Radium’s role in showcasing the performing arts, its ongoing, ever popular “Radium Runway” outdoor offerings will continue also due to The Council’s separate approval of a 12 month licensing agreement.
What that means — as the grand vision for a state of the art PAC in Alameda gets underway– is that, in the here and now, and as it must, the show will go on for Radium, Alameda and the public at large.
