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Eight years ago this week, our “Art of the State” feature, penned by Kris Vagner, offered (what seemed like) great news:
On May 9, Artown’s Board of Directors selected the Sierra School of Performing Arts from a pool of four groups vying for ownership of the Lear Theater. The exact details of the transaction are yet to be finalized, though Artown Board Chair Oliver X told the RN&R on May 15, “It will most likely be a non-cash transaction, or, if there’s any cash transferred, it’ll be nominal, like a dollar.”
For the youth-focused performing arts group, the gift of real estate signifies a giant leap after a 13-year string of hard-won milestones. Local parents Lisa Gunderson, Ann and Davyd Pelsue and Janet Lazarus started the organization in 2005.
“We wanted to create an outlet for [our children], a platform for them,” said Lazarus, who has a master’s degree in theater from UCLA and has worked as a professional actor.
The group borrowed the stage at Galena High School for its first play Wonderland, The Musical Misadventures of a Girl Named Alice. Next, the group began offering summer performing arts camps.
“We thought that we had something really good going, so we expanded to doing a production called Broadway Bits,” said Lazarus, who’s now producing artistic director, one of the nonprofit’s two employees. “We condensed four or five Broadway shows into 25 minutes and put them all together.” Broadway Bits went on for five years.
“Kids that grew up doing these got really good,” said Lazarus. Other theater companies would call to ask for young-actor recommendations. Lazarus’s son got a job with Lake Tahoe Shakespeare while still in high school.
In 2013, the group staged its first full-length Broadway musical in its largest borrowed venue yet, Bartley Ranch, with 403 seats and lawn seating capacity for an additional 600.
“We were really scared that we wouldn’t have an audience,” Lazarus said. That year, audiences numbered about 150 people per night. The following year, the group’s production of Fiddler on the Roof sold out Bartley’s seats. “People began to realize we put on really good shows,” Lazarus said. “Opening night was OK, but after opening night, there were lines.”
The Lear Theater—which was built in 1939 as a church and has changed hands several times, belonging most recently to Artown, has been closed since 2002. The building will require renovations to the tune of an estimated $5-7 million. Lazarus listed some of the projects on the task list—new seating, lighting, sound, control booth, bathrooms, heating and air conditioning, landscaping, paint, and alterations to the stage—and added, “We just have to figure out how to keep it dry. It’s in a flood zone.”
Ideally, Lazarus said, the group will end up with a 300-seat theater that will serve as a permanent stage for her company and also host productions by other groups.
A target opening date for the Lear has not yet been set, and details of the organization’s capital campaign have not been released. For now, Sierra School of Performing Arts is on track to stage its August show, Legally Blonde, at Bartley Ranch, and Merry War Theatre Group, another local company without a permanent home, is planning to stage The Taming of the Shrew on the Lear’s Classical revival-style front steps.
Well … as we all know, this didn’t happen.
The Sierra School of Performing Arts (SSPA) now has a home for classes and camps at 500 E. Moana Lane, and the organization continues to do great work—they’re presenting Mean Girls: The Musical at the Hawkins Amphitheater Aug. 7-22.
As for the Lear … it remains shuttered, with no salvation in sight.
While the late, great Oliver X implied that the transaction between Artown and the SSPA would be pretty breezy, it wound up being anything but. In an opinion piece for This Is Reno on May 27, 2020, former SSPA board member Randi Thompson wrote:
Artown selected our team in a very public and transparent manner. Then we began negotiating with them … for over a year and a half! It’s not like we had to haggle over the price! Artown kept changing the terms of the purchase agreement and placing unreasonable demands on SSPA that were not part of the RFP they issued.
During our negotiations, SSPA hired consultants and attorneys who helped us negotiate the agreement and secure project funding. We planned to use New Market Tax Credits for the restoration, which we were securing. We had a significant portion of the funds to perform the restoration lined up, and we were ready to close on the purchase.
On April 4, 2019 we had a meeting with Artown’s Lear Committee, which included Mayor Hillary Schieve and Artown’s pro-bono attorney, to negotiate final terms of the purchase. Our team left the meeting believing we had reached a final agreement. SSPA redrafted the purchase agreement based on the terms negotiated in good faith at that meeting and sent that revised agreement back to Artown. Two days after we sent back the revised agreement, Artown sent a letter essentially stating their Board “believed that the parties will unfortunately be unable to reach an agreement with terms and conditions that are satisfactory to both parties.”
With that letter, they unilaterally and unexpectedly terminated negotiations, despite a revised agreement that reflected the terms they had just demanded. Our development team was shocked. For months after that we called and emailed Artown seeking specifics of why they terminated negotiations, but they refused to talk to us.
In a subsequent This Is Reno piece, Oliver X gave Artown’s side: “We were unable to reach an agreement that worked for both parties, so we agreed to dissolve the negotiation process and step away from it amicably.”
Anyway … the city of Reno ended up acquiring the Lear from Artown in 2023. Shortly thereafter, the city dedicated $1 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds toward repairing and improving the Lear—but received no bidders to do the work. The city then reallocated the money.
Earlier this year, the Lear and its possible fate again made headlines—in a big way. As This Is Reno reported on April 12:
In a divided and emotionally charged meeting Wednesday, the Reno City Council voted 4-3 to issue a Request for Proposals (RFP)—again—for the historic Lear Theater after rejecting a public push to use redevelopment funds to stabilize the historically significant and deteriorating building.
The decision shifts the burden of saving the 1939 architectural landmark back to the private sector and nonprofits, capping a nearly three-hour discussion.
Council members were divided on the issue. Mayor Hillary Schieve and council members Naomi Duerr and Devon Reese argued the city must fulfill its duty to protect the building from further ruin. It has done little to protect or restore the building—aside from maintaining chain-link fencing around the property—since it formally took ownership in 2023.
Conversely, council members Miguel Martinez, Kathleen Taylor, Meghan Ebert and Brandi Anderson formed the majority opposition, arguing that the city cannot afford the multimillion-dollar financial liabilities required to restore the property while core municipal services are already being cut due to budget deficits.
The vote infuriated local historic-preservation advocates. In The Barber Brief on April 13, Alicia Barber called the move “a shocking vote to ditch the Lear Theater,” and went on to write that the vote was “in complete contradiction to the input they had themselves solicited from the public six months ago and against the recommendations of the city’s own advisory board on historic preservation, the Historical Resources Commission.” (If you care about the issue, that April 13 piece and Barber’s May 5 follow-up are required reading.)
On May 6, the City Council reversed itself, sort of: In their capacity as the Redevelopment Agency Board, allocated $2 million for Lear Theater stabilization, a feasibility study for future use, and other work on the property.
What’s next for the Lear? Nobody knows. Of course, we’ll keep you posted.
—Jimmy Boegle
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