SLO Rep announces $1 million donation, new downtown theater plan: ‘Couldn’t be more excited’

Kaytlyn Leslie
·7 min read

Some big changes are in store for San Luis Obispo Repertory Theatre — changes that could drastically alter the performing arts scene in downtown San Luis Obispo.

The nonprofit regional theater group, known as SLO Rep, has long been a key part of efforts to develop a cultural arts district in the city — including plans to build a multi-story theater complex across from an incoming parking structure at the intersection of Palm and Nipomo streets.

Those plans hit a massive roadblock during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic when the parking structure was delayed and the price tag for the new theater doubled due to rising construction costs.

So its planners were forced to do what they do best: Get creative.

“We just had an emergency board meeting after the pricing study came in and basically said this project we had been looking at for the last 10 years is really no longer feasible,” SLO Rep Managing Artistic Director Kevin Harris told The Tribune on Wednesday. “So this gave us a chance to really kind of boil it down to ‘What does the city want out of this project? What’s the essence of what we’re trying to do here?’ ”

The group realized it didn’t need a massive three-story complex to house both the performing arts aspects of the group’s operations as well as its administrative and more educational parts, Harris said. Instead it could split those up among two properties: a downtown theater space and a separate office space elsewhere.

SLO Rep has revised plans for its new downtown theater on Monterey and Nipomo streets to encompass a smaller one-story building with a mainstage theater and black box theater. The new building is expected to draw 50,000 patrons a year. A rendering shows the front entrance to the theater.
SLO Rep has revised plans for its new downtown theater on Monterey and Nipomo streets to encompass a smaller one-story building with a mainstage theater and black box theater. The new building is expected to draw 50,000 patrons a year. A rendering shows the front entrance to the theater.

Scaling-down the project allows the group to not only avoid a significant cost increase, but also moves up the timeline for when the theater could potentially be up and running, Harris said.

On Thursday, SLO Rep also announced the Harold J. Miossi Charitable Trust had gifted the organization $1 million — another huge development that means the theater will likely be able to open by as soon as January 2027, Harris said.

With the addition of the donation, as well as a $3.9 million grant from the city of San Luis Obispo in February 2021, SLO Rep has secured a total of $11 million to go to the project — more than two-thirds of its $15.3 million goal, according to a news release.

“For the first time in 12 years, we have everything — the most important parts of the campaign,” Harris said. “We had the passion and the perseverance and determination to get it done, but we never really had that end date.”

He added: “For SLO Rep to be the linchpin of that arts district and being able to bring 50,000 people a year downtown into the district and into the downtown core — we just couldn’t be more excited.”

SLO Rep has revised plans for its new downtown theater on Monterey and Nipomo streets to encompass a smaller one-story building with a mainstage theater and black box theater. The new building is expected to draw 50,000 patrons a year. A rendering shows the theater from the street.
SLO Rep has revised plans for its new downtown theater on Monterey and Nipomo streets to encompass a smaller one-story building with a mainstage theater and black box theater. The new building is expected to draw 50,000 patrons a year. A rendering shows the theater from the street.

What is SLO Rep planning for new downtown theater, office space?

SLO Rep, which was founded as San Luis Obispo Little Theatre in 1947, has operated out of its current location at 888 Morro St. in San Luis Obispo for 30 years.

In 2012, the city offered the organization land adjacent to its planned parking structure — which has since been renamed the Cultural Arts District Parking Structure — with the agreement that private funds would pay for construction of a new theater.

The city would own the theater while SLO Rep would operate the venue long-term under a $1 annual lease agreement.

For the past 10 years, Harris said, SLO Rep had mainly envisioned housing all of its operations in a brand-new, three-story building at that location.

Soon after the coronavirus pandemic stalled work on the parking structure — which is now slated to begin construction later this year — SLO Rep commissioned a pricing study on its long-held building design and received a nasty shock.

“That very same design that would cost about $7 million back in 2013 was now between $14.5 and $15 million. The exact same building,” Harris said. “It took our overall campaign goal from around $10 million to $18 million dollars, and we knew that $18 million was above not only our raising capacity, but (also) basically any nonprofit’s. It’s a really heavy lift.”

After “going to the Hotel SLO rooftop bar and crying,” Harris recalled, the SLO Rep team got to work figuring out how it could feasibly move forward.

Enter the two-location plan.

SLO Rep has revised plans for its new downtown theater on Monterey and Nipomo streets to encompass a smaller one-story building with a mainstage theater and black box theater. The new building is expected to draw 50,000 patrons a year. A rendering shows the site plan for the new complex.
SLO Rep has revised plans for its new downtown theater on Monterey and Nipomo streets to encompass a smaller one-story building with a mainstage theater and black box theater. The new building is expected to draw 50,000 patrons a year. A rendering shows the site plan for the new complex.

Still located at the corner of Monterey and Nipomo streets, the new SLO REP theater complex will be a single-story, 12,000-square-foot building featuring a 215-seat main stage theater for fully staged musicals, dramas and comedies, and a 99-seat black box theater for staged readings, workshop productions of new plays and other live entertainment, according to news release.

The complex would act as one of the main draws for the residents and visitors predicted to flock to the new downtown Cultural Arts District for a range of performing arts activities.

The new SLO REP theater is expected to draw 50,000 visitors to downtown SLO each year.

“I know firsthand what a destination regional theater can do for our community — like (how) it completely changes the energy of the downtown when people start showing up for the shows at night,” Harris said. “You can just feel it, and I just can’t believe how lucky SLO Rep is and how lucky I am to be a part of this huge thing. The new Cultural Arts District is is going to be a huge thing for downtown SLO.”

Meanwhile, SLO Rep has purchased a building at 3533 Empleo St. to serve as its new headquarters. The structure previously housed People’s Self-Help Housing.

“It was just really a perfect solution for us,” Harris said. “We could purchase this building outright with the funds that we had already raised — obviously after speaking with all of our donors — and this building was basically ready-made for us to move in and house all of our admin.”

He said the Empleo Street building also allowed the theater company to expand its Academy of Creative Theatre (ACT) program, which trains kids with year-round theater classes, camps and performance opportunities.

Previously the classes had to compete for space with the SLO Rep’s main productions and administration, Harris said.

However, he said, SLO Rep’s new building had five different classrooms already available for those uses, meaning SLO Rep was able to offer twice as many classes in its schedule as before.

“We were able to immediately expand our educational program from the moment we got the keys,” he said. “That program has been wanting to expand for so long. It’s just been so difficult and we’ve had a building block here.”

Harris said the building also gives SLO Rep more rehearsal space and room for set construction.

“We got so much more than we ever expected, so much more than we had previously designed, for far less money,” Harris said, “And it never would have happened if we hadn’t really sort of hit that COVID brick wall and were forced to really blow the campaign apart.”

SLO Rep has revised plans for its new downtown theater on Monterey and Nipomo streets to encompass a smaller one-story building with a mainstage theater and black box theater. The new building is expected to draw 50,000 patrons a year. A rendering shows the main entrance at night.
SLO Rep has revised plans for its new downtown theater on Monterey and Nipomo streets to encompass a smaller one-story building with a mainstage theater and black box theater. The new building is expected to draw 50,000 patrons a year. A rendering shows the main entrance at night.

$1 million donation comes from performing arts philanthropy group

Harris said the Miossi Trust donation “is absolutely huge” for helping to solidify the future plans for SLO Rep.

“It’s just the first step to to our larger plans,” he said.

In appreciation of the Miossi Trust donation, the lobby of the new SLO Rep theater building will be named after late philanthropist Harold J. Miossi, who set up his trust before his death in 2006 to help support a variety of local causes and organizations, according to the release.

“We are honored, humbled and deeply grateful for this generous gift,” SLO Rep board president Pam Nichter said in the release. “The Miossi Trust is well known for its strategic arts philanthropy, having given similar gifts to support the performing arts centers on the Cuesta College and Cal Poly campuses. We are proud to be included in that league of first-class venues, and we are delighted to honor Mr. Miossi’s extraordinary legacy.”

Howard Carroll, a trustee on the Miossi Charitable Trust, said in the release that Misossi would have been “delighted to support SLO Rep’s ambitious vision to become not only a destination regional theater, but also an important educational and cultural institution.”

“He would have no doubt that SLO Rep will be a huge asset to downtown SLO, both as an artistic and economic driver for decades to come,” Carroll said in the release. “I urge all patrons to join the Miossi Trust in supporting SLO Rep to ensure successful completion of this capital campaign.”