After looking for years for a new location, San Juan Capistrano's community theater finally has found its new home.
The team running the Camino Real Playhouse in San Juan Capistrano found out that they would have to move in 2022. They have been looking for a new home ever since and finally, they've found one – just in time.
In 2017, the building that has been the home of the Playhouse since the early 1990s was purchased by Dan Almquist with Frontier Real Estate Investments. They have allowed the theater to stay in the space at 31776 El Camino Real until they were ready to start work. Almquist, who recently opened the River Street Marketplace and who is behind much of the new development in the city, now seems ready to focus on the Playhouse property.
What a difference a year makes
On Christmas Eve morning 2023, Leslie Eisner, artistic director of the Camino Real Playhouse, woke up with one part of her world in synchronicity: After a year of searching, the theater that had called the city home for some 35 years had finally found a new home.
“I thought for sure it was going to be a go,” Eisner said. “We’d been working for almost six months, back and forth, negotiating with this one property and it really looked like a go.”
But later that day she got the call that it was off.
Flash forward 372 days. New Year’s Eve, 2024.
In front of about 60 actors, volunteers and patrons gathered for a private party, Eisner could finally announce that the show would go on. Eisner could finally announce that the show would go on. The playhouse had signed a lease to move into the Capistrano Plaza at 31896 Plaza Drive, about half a mile south of its current location adjacent to the Mission San Juan Capistrano.
“Not to sound like a cliché but it really felt like this awesome weight had been taken off our shoulders,” said Paul Hunn, the playhouse’s vice president and the lead in the search for a new space. “To finally be able to say to all these people that you’re accountable to, the actors and volunteers and patrons, people who were relying on us to continue this legacy that is more than 30 years old … to finally say that we’ve signed a lease, it was just a huge relief.”
It was also freedom from the fear that the demolition ball would come before the playhouse found a new home. That was a constant reality since the playhouse learned in November 2022 that a performing arts venue was not included in the final plans submitted to the city by the developer who purchased the property in 2017.
Originally, the deadline to vacate the property was June 2024. That deadline has moved several times since, and there are two comedies remaining at its current space: “Departed” which will run Jan. 17-Feb. 2, followed by the “25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” from Feb. 14-March 3. Eisner said the playhouse will begin vacating the space next month and be completely moved out in early March.
The playhouse will sacrifice the walk-by traffic and ambiance that being so close to the mission afforded – its new neighbors are a horse supply store and a mattress store – but the greater visibility from the freeway will partially offset that and there are restaurants and a brewery in the plaza, “so it’s not like we’re on the outskirts,” Eisner said.
And patrons should be relieved by one of the new perks at the new location: plenty of free parking.
Relief comes with new burdens
The new space is about 2,000 square feet smaller than the old playhouse, Eisner said, and building a 99-seat theater and smaller black box theater like the Playhouse envisions means space will be tighter. And building those spaces in what was formally a furniture store could cost upward of $1 million. But the playhouse is aiming for an opening in the space this year in time for a 2025 holiday show.
“We basically have four walls and an empty space,” Eisner said. “We have to put in bathrooms, so then you have to run pipes, and you have to put in lighting, you have to put in seats, you have to put in a stage, you have to put in an office, you have to put in dressing rooms. You have to basically build out the entire space.”
That’s what the original playhouse did but it was over a number of years.
“It was kind of a big open space that was built out piece by piece, but we're going to have to do it all in one fell swoop,” Eisner said. “People might think that the hard part is maybe raising the money, or the hard part is finding the space, or the hard part is building the space, but it's all hard.”
Another financial consideration is the lease. Initially, the playhouse’s search began with the aim of buying a property outright, something made possible by an anonymous donor’s pledge in early 2023. That came with one stipulation: The building had to be in San Juan Capistrano.
But finding a suitable building proved more difficult than expected, Eisner said.
“I have learned an awful lot about things like conditional use permits and zoning and parking and ADA requirements. And for a theater, we would need close to 10,000 square feet and high ceilings and there aren’t a whole lot of buildings in San Juan that fit that description. It’s not that big of a city.”
It came close several times, so close that “we toyed with announcing it,” Eisner said.
But just when it looked like it had found a compatible space, something would happen, like issues over parking, and “the rug would be swept out from under us,” Hunn said.
The playhouse even began looking for sites outside the city. But that was also fruitless.
“I talked to all the cities around and they all said they wanted a playhouse, but none were willing to contribute the resources to make it happen,” Eisner said.
Unable to find a building to buy, the playhouse’s search shifted toward leasing.
And with a small assist from the 5 freeway, the playhouse found one.
A Drive-by Sighting
“We’d been combing through every single building that was listed and even had one realtor who would walk up and down the streets and knock on doors of buildings that weren’t even available, just to find out if people were interested,” Eisner said. “But then driving home on the freeway one day I saw a for-lease sign on a building. I was like, ‘Well, let's check that one out.’”
The long-term lease the playhouse has signed is at market value, Hunn said, a far cry from the $100-a-year lease it paid the city for years. That means a “higher degree of accountability” in terms of how money is spent, Hunn said.
But the choice between paying more and having no playhouse was never a choice.
“So many theaters closed during COVID or closed after for financial reasons,” Eisner said. “It doesn’t take much for a theater to go under since so many live off donations. And there aren’t a whole lot of community theaters that are left. But I heard from so many people through all this that we absolutely can't lose the theater. It's this little gem that people have grown very, very connected to over the years. It’s like a family kind of feeling and people were very concerned that they were going to lose us. So, everybody is just thrilled about this move.”
