In what could be a very interesting development, an investment group is looking at redoing the Crest.
Bob Shallit: Art center status planned at Crest
By Bob Shallit - Bee Columnist
Published 12:00 am PDT Wednesday, June 6, 2007
A wine country investment group is hoping to buy Sacramento's venerable Crest Theatre and turn it into a performing arts center modeled after one of New York's most famous entertainment venues.
"It will be kind of a small Lincoln Center right in the center of the city," says Jim Brennan of Trancas Ventures.
That comment came at a brief City Council appearance last week. Since then, no additional information has been forthcoming from the investment group, indicating that a purchase of the property is not yet completed.
Crest manager Sid Garcia- Heberger also is being coy.
"We've talked with the prospective buyer, but we have no comment at this point," she says.
Brennan, whose group has acquired a half-dozen other properties on K Street Mall over the past year, indicated during his three-minute council talk that a deal for the 95-year-old theater was all but done.
He described himself as a graduate of New York's Juilliard School of performing arts, a musician and a longtime developer who has been involved in major urban renovation projects in San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter, the South of Market area in San Francisco and elsewhere.
He said his focus now is on downtown Sacramento, where St. Helena-based Trancas has earmarked $75 million for projects that include conversion of the former Roos Atkins building, at 10th and K, into office condos.
The group's interest in the Crest, at 1013 K, excites Michael Ault, executive director of the Downtown Sacramento Partnership.
The current owners and managers have done a great job of bringing varied events and films to the theater, he says. But a deep-pocketed investor coming in, upgrading the theater while maintaining its "funkiness?"
"That's great news," Ault says.
