Liberty Station, the decades-long transformation of San Diego’s massive Naval Training Center into a mixed-use neighborhood and cultural district, is a welcome reprieve from much of Southern California’s fragmented sprawl. Thanks to its 1920s-era Spanish Revival buildings, arched colonnades and broad public promenades, visiting it feels like stepping back to a time when walkability and simple elegance were the norm. To get a picture in your head, rewatch the original “Top Gun” for NTC’s cameo when Tom Cruise’s Maverick rides toward the house of Kelly McGillis’ Charlie along the complex’s Roosevelt Road with the arcaded buildings perfectly framing the shot.
Despite its legacy and the site’s many amenities, Arts District Liberty Station, the nonprofit that manages more than 100 of Liberty Station’s cultural and hospitality facilities, was still searching for an anchor. Enter San Diego’s Cygnet Theatre, which was seeking a new home. Cygnet had long outgrown its technologically outdated, barnlike theater in Old Town San Diego, its lease was uncertain and its operations were scattered around the area, notes Sean Murray, the Cygnet’s co-founder and artistic director.
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On Sept. 10, Liberty Station’s long-neglected naval base exchange, otherwise known as Building 178, will be reborn as the Cygnet’s new home. Called the Joan, short for the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Performing Arts Center in recognition of the project’s lead donors, the 42,000-square-foot complex will serve as the theater’s home for productions — its first will be a staging of James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies” — and its offices, while hosting other performance companies from around the region.
Building 178, originally opened in 1942, had included a bowling alley, commissary, tailor shop and even a disco. But after the Navy closed the San Diego training center in 1997, it sat empty and deteriorating, facing threats of demolition or commercial redevelopment.
1. Chris Bittner, a principal at San Diego’s OBR Architecture. 2. Irwin Jacobs, one of San Diego’s most prominent arts philanthropists. 3. Sean Murray, the Cygnet’s co-founder and artistic director. (Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)
“When the Navy left, they just walked out,” says Lisa Johnson, executive director of Arts District Liberty Station. “It looked like they’d gone to lunch — half-drunk coffee cups still on the desks.” Much of Building 178 barely stood. “Ceilings had collapsed. Columns were rotted through. In some cases, stucco was holding up walls that had no structural core,” says architect Chris Bittner, a principal at San Diego-based OBR Architecture.
Bittner, whose grandfather trained at the base during World War II, has worked on various Liberty Station projects for more than two decades. He and his team rebuilt the building’s eastern flank, now containing rehearsal spaces, re-creating the colonial-style roof, beams and walls while opening up breezeways that had been bricked in.
The Joan’s two performance venues — a 280-plus-seat proscenium theater and a 150-seat black box — are built into the surviving part of the building, but many of the spaces around them had to be reconfigured.
For the main theater, to avoid changing the building’s historic roofline, crews excavated below the original slab, lowering the stage and audience levels so catwalks, rigging and lighting grids could fit under the low profile. “We basically took a two-story building and sunk it down a floor,” notes Bittner. Raising the black-box theater ceiling and making the space column-free required massive transfer beams to carry the load of the floor above.
Because the theater sits directly under San Diego International Airport’s flight path (just try having an uninterrupted conversation in the Point Loma neighborhood), the architects wrapped each theater in layered wall assemblies, rubber gaskets and sound-lock vestibules with paired doors to block noise. HVAC units were acoustically isolated with springs and pads, ductwork was lined to slow air velocity, and separate mechanical zones were created so lobby or shop noise couldn’t leak into performances. The main stage also has a thick concrete ceiling, and its subtly faceted acoustic wall panels, embedded with micro-perforations, double as sound absorbers and diffusers, subtly tuning the space.
1. Leonard and Elaine Hirsch Community Green Room 2. The Dottie Studio Theater 3. Molli and Arthur Wagner Rehearsal Studio 4. Pam Fair and Glen Sullivan Dressing Room 4 (Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)
The auditorium design is modern but understated, with its angled panels and pops of color providing lively accents while still focusing attention on performances. The lobby, which opens to its surroundings (and breezes) via large sliding glass doors, tells a different story. With warm wood paneling, exposed concrete, terrazzo and low steel railings, the lively space feels both modern and nostalgic, with references to its past life as a bowling alley. There are lane arrows in some of the floorboards while original lane numbers are painted on the basement girders of the back-of-house spaces. There’s also a small art gallery just below, reached via an open stair.
The project might never have come to life without the support of the Jacobs’, San Diego’s most prominent arts philanthropists. (Irwin Jacobs founded Qualcomm, among other endeavors.) Joan Jacobs died last year, making the theater’s name, which had already been planned, especially poignant. Even more so because Joan, raised in New York City, was a passionate theatergoer. The couple pledged $10 million when the project was still starting up — a move certainly noted by subsequent donors. “Once people saw the scope and ambition it became easier to attract other supporters,” Murray says.
“We hoped our gift would be a catalyst,” says Irwin Jacobs, whose son Gary helped found Liberty Station’s High Tech High in 2000, giving the Jacobs familiarity with the area. “We wanted to help set the stage for the next chapter,” he adds. Jacobs and his late wife supported a dizzying list of cultural facilities in the city (in addition to science and educational giving) including, in recent years, the San Diego Symphony’s Jacobs Music Center, the Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego’s Joan and Irwin Jacobs Building.
“They have shaped the cultural landscape of San Diego,” Johnson says.
Jacobs, who acknowledged that his contributions have “made San Diego a more dynamic place to live and work,” says the Joan may be one of the last (or the last) major cultural project he supports. “We couldn’t think of a better note to end on,” he says. Additional funding included a $10-million grant from the state of California (something that seems unimaginable in today’s political climate), as well as support from San Diego County and dozens of private donors.
The Joan and Irwin Jacobs Performing Arts Center (“The Joan”) in Liberty Station in San Diego.
(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)
While Cygnet will operate the facility, the Joan — located at what Bittner calls “the front door” to Liberty Station — is designed as a shared community space. The secondary black box, named the Dottie for significant donor Dorothea Laub, will be available for rental and outside performances. Public galleries and lobby spaces will activate the building throughout the day, not just during shows.
Even as Cygnet prepares to open the Joan, fundraising continues — about 14% of the $43.5-million budget remains to be raised. To its creators, the building’s most lasting legacy may be how it draws people into a campus that also boasts shops, galleries, artist studios, restaurants, museums, a cinema and Liberty Public Market food hall.
“This project is going to activate the whole campus in a way we’ve never seen,” Johnson says. “It’s not just a theater — it’s a magnet. It will bring people here during the day, into the evenings, and make this district a true cultural destination.”