By A. Kam Napier | January 13, 2023
There’s a sketch of a floor plan for the new Diamond Head Theatre that Andrew Tanton, vice president of the Cumming Group in Honolulu, penned almost four years to the day of the grand opening gala held Jan. 7. For Tanton, who served as the construction manager on behalf of DHT, the sketch epitomizes how quickly the new theater came together, from conception to opening.
“People don’t appreciate the challenges in getting things built, getting contractors on board, doing it all through Covid — that’s an amazing story,” he said in an interview with Pacific Business News.
What made that four-year blitz possible, of course, was the preceding decade-plus of planning and fundraising.
“In 2007, we had done some strategic planning and found that the facility itself was the main obstacle to any visionary growth for the theater,” recalled Executive Director Deena Dray. From that point on, she said, everything was about solving the problem of the 1920s Army movie house — Fort Ruger Theatre — that had been the community theatre’s home since 1952, when it was known as Honolulu Community Theatre.
The first step was a building assessment, which determined that replacing the building would cost less than modernizing the old theater building. A site development plan then determined that DHT could use part of its property to house the new building while still running shows in the old theatre, meaning no interruption to its operations. Shows could go on like normal, classes could be taught, sets built, all right until it was time to move next door.
That turned out mostly as planned, with the final show closing in the old theater last October, just before it was demolished. The first production in the new building, “Cinderella,” opens Jan. 20. The only thing that upset that continuity plan was the emergence of Covid, with the rules and anxieties about public gatherings. Despite the public’s fear, Dray said subscribers are returning, with 3,600 people holding season tickets now, compared to 4,600 pre-Covid.
The planning, she continued, was the fun part. The board of directors’ facilities committee looked after planning, and securing a theater consultant, an architect and a general contractor.
The fundraising was a bit trickier. In all, DHT has raised nearly all of the $22.37 million needed for the new construction. The organization also took out a mortgage to cover some of the costs.
For nonprofits undertaking a similar venture, Dray said one secret to DHT’s success was board continuity. “I joke that it’s like ‘Hotel California,’” she said. “Once they’re on the board, I never let them leave!”
The board today is substantially the same group that agreed to move forward with a new building 15 years earlier, providing the organization with a foundational commitment to the project and also giving the staff and board a chance to grow together as fundraisers.
When Dray became executive director in the early ’90s, DHT’s annual budget was about $1 million. Twenty years later, by the Covid-19 pandemic, it had grown to $3 million. But most of the fundraising was done by the staff and was geared around daily operations — supplementing ticket and subscription revenue with things like show sponsorships, membership drives and an annual fund drive, Dray said.
Together, staff and the board had to learn how to ask people for six or seven figures at a time.
“That is harder than one would ever imagine because the people you think are your devout followers that love, love, love you, somehow don’t always give you the support you need,” she said. “And there’s people who you don’t think will ever give you more than $25 that step up and give you a magnificent gift. Those ups and downs and peaks and valleys, I think was something we all had to work through as a board.”
There were disappointments along the way, especially when economic impacts of Covid policies left some supporters unable to pay their promised amounts. But there were also some emotionally moving positive experiences.
Asked to name some of those, Dray hesitated briefly, but shared one in particular, the story of Paul Tremaine. Tremaine’s involvement with DHT’s began in 1963, when he joined then-Honolulu Community Theatre as technical director. He later formed a theatrical equipment rental business, ATTCO, which became his full-time job, but stayed on with DHT as a volunteer and as a board member. He was on the facilities committee, helping to plan the new building, when he died in August 2021.
To Dray’s surprise, he left his estate to the theater. “I cried when I got that call,” Dray said.
Part of his gift will go toward an endowment fund, and part will help close out the fundraising campaign for the building.
At the time of our interview, Dray was preparing for the Jan. 7 gala celebrating the new building — which isn’t entirely done. As we toured the site, the marque hadn’t been installed, the covered outdoor lobby still lacked a cover, and the former site of Fort Ruger Theatre was still being shaped and graded for its future as a small garden park.
“It’s still very much kind of a construction site, but it’s enough to put a show on,” she said. “All we gotta do is get in, put the lights down and magic happens.”
Design and execution
While Dray and the board raised the funds, Tanton concentrated on making the building itself happen as construction manager, and it was another long-term relationship for DHT. “I think our first invoice that we processed for the theater was in 2010, when it engaged a theater planner.”
For Tanton, such nonprofit jobs are “the sweet spot” in his work with Cumming Group, an international project management firm. “Hawaii is all about relationships and the community and that’s what drew me to Hawaii and keeps me here,” he said.
Nonprofit clients of Cumming Group have included PBS Hawaii, YMCA, Goodwill Hawaii, Blood Bank of Hawaii and Salvation Army Hawaii, among others. Nonprofits doing major new buildings benefit from bringing in an experienced construction manager, he said, because unlike developers, who talk to construction companies all the time, they have little direct experience working with a general contractor, comparing estimates, responding to change orders and more.
PBN spoke with Tanton and architect Jared Wood, partner with the Houston-based firm of Studio RED Architects, which specializes in theaters and entertainment venues.
The architects said they had challenges of their own on the project, the first being that DHT’s new building had to abide by the design restrictions of the Diamond Head Special Design District. This adds a layer of city requirements to new projects above and beyond the usual building codes enforced by the city Department of Planning and Permitting, setting specific requirements for such things as building height and color.
These rules influenced the shape of the new theater, as Wood explained. For example, height limits increase the further from the street a building sits, so the box office front of the theatre is lower than its stage end, where the high fly loft for scenery needed to be.
Construction was impacted by peak Covid-era supply chain disruptions and as a result, the project is wrapping up about six months later than originally planned. Most delayed were the structural steel trusses for the roof over the theater hall and, due to the computer chip shortage, some of the all-new AV electronics to give the building state of the art sound quality.
One thing not impacted by Covid was the shell of the building itself, constructed by general contractor Allied Builders System out of locally produced concrete masonry units, or CMUs, commonly called “cinder block.” Wood said that this material brought a lot of benefits — it could be cast in colors that met design district requirements, like earth tones, that wouldn’t need to be painted on the exterior; it could serve as both an exterior and interior surface; and it has acoustic properties that are perfect for a theater.
In fact, the sound experience of the new building is something both architects were very excited about, including the work by Kailua-based acousticians CENSEO AV+Acoustics.
“People are going to be absolutely astounded when they hear the sound in this building, especially compared to the historically poor sound quality of the old building,” Tanton said.
Other habitability upgrades include wider seats, more leg room, and a steeper pitch to the auditorium floor for better views of the stage. There’s a purpose-built concession stand that should be able to serve drinks and snacks much faster than before. And restroom capacity has more than doubled.
Every place where a budget constraint arose, the decision was always guided by improving the experience for audiences and performers first. The DHT staff put itself last — Dray and her team are working out of converted classrooms next door at Kapiolani Community College. New offices will come later, in the remaining scene shop extension of the old theater.
When asked what other nonprofits can take away from DHT’s experience, Tanton said it all comes down to board engagement. “I can tell you that with all the nonprofit projects I’ve worked on, this is one of the most amazing boards I’ve ever worked with,” he said.
The ideal board for a new building project is committed, focused, decisive and willing to take some risks, he said. “This is a really well organized, passionate board — and Deena’s got so much passion for this theater. I think if it was any other board it would still be in planning, but they got this thing to happen in four years.”