Although a recent and relatively sudden change in management at the Crest Theater in Sacramento resulted in a rash of cancelled shows and refund confusion, the building’s owner-turned-operator Robert “Bob” Emerick is hopeful for a return to form for the vintage venue.
For the past four months, Emerick and his daughter Ellie have been working tirelessly to bring the Crest back to its former glory. The 112-year-old building had accrued a laundry list of upkeep issues since Emerick, owner of the K Street landmark since 2011, had last been involved in day-to-day operations. The work started on day one, when the pair arrived at the theater to assess what needed to be done just in time to witness the women’s bathroom pipes overflow.
The summer was a marathon of upkeep for the Emericks, from replacing burnt-out neon on the exterior marquee to repairing air-conditioning systems and the gigantic golden drape that covers the theater’s silver screen.
There was a time not too long ago when Emerick had started to think his time with the Crest was coming to a close. He’d bought the property, including the adjoining Empress Tavern, after stepping away from a career in engineering in order to spend more time with his family. After years of running the Empress with the help of an associate who handled most of the daily operations at the Crest, he’d seen an opportunity to retire when one of the promoters that worked with the business frequently, GD Theatres, inquired about leasing the space. GD took over operations in October 2019, and Emerick eventually moved to Santa Cruz.
“In 2019, we thought we were going to retire,” Bob recounted. “We leased to our largest promoter; they’d been doing great shows and built up. They came in late 2019, but COVID shut everything down in March of 2020. They had absolutely no real time to get going before it immediately got shut down by COVID.”
Like virtually every business working in live entertainment, GD Theatres was thoroughly rocked by the pandemic, according to Robert Alvis, who managed the Crest from 2019 until May of this year.
“We were shut down for a long time before we were able to reopen, and even then, there were times when we could only have a certain number of people in the building,” Alvis said. “It’s hard to get back online quickly; it’s not exactly like turning on a light switch.”
The lockdowns were just the start of issues for GD Theatres as they tried to navigate a changed live entertainment landscape. When lockdowns first lifted, audiences were still much smaller as many were still being cautious, Alvis recalled. Some audiences never returned; Alvis noted analytics that showed ticket sales in areas east of Sacramento, including Folsom and Roseville, had fallen precipitously ever since 2020.
“Crowd-wise, it never fully came back,” Alvis said. “We can see through our ticket sales that prior to COVID, we drew a lot from the east of Sacramento, and that kind of stopped after COVID. Maybe it’s the entertainment venues that opened up at the casinos; maybe they’re going elsewhere for entertainment. Maybe, you know, a lot of people just don’t want to come downtown.”
Programming at the theater continued to be a challenge in the following years, with film showings taking the most significant hit to audience turnout numbers. GD Theatres did their best to adapt and do right by the venue and their staff; they would sometimes put on midweek shows that just barely cleared operations costs in order to ensure their employees could stay working full time. But money started to dry up, and some months they had to pay their rent late.
After years of trying to make it work, Alvis and his partner Elliot Prestwich came to the conclusion in April that they couldn’t keep going with the Crest, and handed the keys back to Emerick.
“We had a 10-year lease on the building, and hoped things would ratchet up to a point where we could make money [and] pay back those losses,” Alvis said. “Early this year, we met a few times and it just became clear that, even if there was a turnaround, it was not going to happen quick enough.”
With GD Theatres stepping away from the Crest, a slew of shows were pulled from the event calendar. Alvis explained that some shows only worked when they operated the space, as the cost of renting the space and the loss of additional revenue such as concessions made some tickets infeasible without hitting an unattractive ticket price.
This wave of cancellations led to frustration from hopeful eventgoers and tour planners alike. Alvis and his partner have been working to process refund requests as they come in, though the situation hasn’t been painless. Because Emerick and his daughter have switched to a different ticket processor (due to lower back-end fees), the current operators of the Crest are unable to handle refund requests.
Though Emerick had the option of seeking new management or selling the venue outright — something he had previously considered — he decided to move back to Sacramento and get the theater back on its feet after Ellie Emerick expressed interest in picking up the torch.
“When I put it up for sale last year, my daughter came to me and said, ‘Dad, I’m a little disappointed. I kind of thought maybe I might operate the theater,’” Emerick recalled. “I had no idea that’s what she wanted to do. So, when all of this transpired, I decided to come back to Sacramento and operate it myself. She’s been working as my chief operating officer all summer long, getting all of the systems in place, contracts and ticketing and you name it. She’s going back to school in three weeks and will graduate in December, and then she’ll let me know whether this is what she wants to do.”
Ellie Emerick is pursuing a master’s degree in quantitative economics at UCLA, but has been interested in merging her love for live concerts and business for years. The Crest has been a landmark in her life for most of her memories; even before her father bought the theater when she was 9 years old, she’d performed there herself as part of a dance competition. She’s excited at the chance to bring new life to the theater and already has plans for how to bring in a younger audience than the Crest has typically courted.
“Long term, I know that right now the crowd is 45-plus; they’re also the ones that have more of the money to spend,” she said. “I think it’d be nice to get some smaller acts here. We always either get the artist on the up or the down; I think I’d like to get more artists that are on the up, you know, and so then 10, 15 years from now we can be like, ‘Oh, they played at the Crest Theater once upon a time ago.’”
Ellie Emerick and her dad both have other fresh ideas for the Crest and the adjoining Empress Tavern (named for the vaudeville theater that first occupied the space in 1913). Some are simple conveniences for the audience and performers — Emerick’s been working to install a camera system, which will allow people in the green rooms backstage and visitors to the concession stand see what’s happening on stage.
New plans for programming have been a combination of brainstorming, reconnecting with different show producers and discussions with community members.
“We’re getting a lot of people calling and giving us suggestions for what the community needs,” Emerick said. “Most people have a good idea, but they either lack the financial resources or the fire in their belly to follow through. We’ve been working with a lot of these people that have never done this and said, ‘Hey, if you want to try that, you do it and we’ll support you; let’s see what we can do.’”
The community-minded approach has already borne fruit; a local came to Emerick with a plan to show each of The Twilight Saga films for $2 tickets. Weeks before the showing of the first film, a majority of the seats for the entire multiweek event were already sold out.
Because of a midweek lull in audience numbers and general foot traffic in the area, Bob is also redefining how he approaches operating the Empress Tavern, named for the 1913 vaudeville theater that occupied the space before being renamed the Hippodrome in 1920, and, later, The Crest. The space will now be operated in partnership with the nonprofit Alchemist Community Development Corporation.
Prior to making the jump to the nonprofit sector, Alchemist CDC’s Director of Advancement Shannin Stein had worked at the Empress Tavern; when Emerick made plans to come back to the area, Stein was one of the first people he called. Stein saw an opportunity to synergize Emerick’s plans with the nonprofits, and the space will now serve as a private events space where chefs associated with the nonprofit can work on their craft and experiment.
“Bob has a wonderfully, wonderfully generous spirit,” Stein said. “That’s what started Empress 10 or 12 years ago — Bob’s desire to invest in creative culinary voices and individuals who didn’t have their own finances to start their vision up themselves. And that’s what Alchemist is. That’s what we do in our Alchemist Kitchen program.”
While Alchemist prepares for its flagship project — the Alchemist Public Market which opens next year — the nonprofit now has a space to hit the ground running and give under-resourced food entrepreneurs hands-on experience in an established brick and mortar location. The plan is to start as a private events space with programming for public, accessible events like bingo nights, though Stein and Emerick both hope to expand to having dinner options on the weekend.
“We’re trying a different experiment; instead of having a meal seven days a week, we’re going to start off as this private event space — cocktail parties, those types of events,” Emerick says. “As it gets built up, then we’ll eventually hope to have other offerings, maybe dinner service Friday and Saturday night. That gives us the ability to plan our menu, keep the cost in line so that it can be profitable more than two nights a week. Because of that, the restaurant will be operated much like the Crest in that we’re going to curate an event.”
This story is part of the Solving Sacramento journalism collaborative. This story was funded by the City of Sacramento’s Arts and Creative Economy Journalism Grant to Solving Sacramento. Following our journalism code of ethics, the city had no editorial influence over this story. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, Capital Public Radio, Hmong Daily News, Outword, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review and Sacramento Observer. Sign up for our “Sac Art Pulse” newsletter here.
By Odin Rasco
