Five entities seek to run Civic Auditorium
The city issued a request for proposal this summer to allow for interested entities to apply to operate the entertainment venue. The auditorium’s fate has been uncertain as the city navigates funding and management challenges.
The Civic Auditorium may be getting a new operator in the near future.
Five entities have applied to run the Redding entertainment venue, which has been facing challenges for years. The entities hail from various locations, including Redding, Southern California, Tennessee and Iowa.
The Civic was formerly operated by Advance Redding, a nonprofit that was created by Bethel Church leaders to manage it more than 14 years ago. The organization transferred management back to the city about two months ago when it became unable to stay afloat financially after failing to retain crucial funding from the city.
The Redding City Council decided this summer to issue a request for proposal, or RFP, to allow interested entities to apply to operate the Civic even though after Advance Redding’s issues, some people were skeptical that anyone would be interested in managing it. As part of last week’s State of the City address, Mayor Mike Littau emphasized the similar thoughts he and others on the council have had as he announced that five entities have applied.
“I think if you ask the council,” he said, “we were kind of surprised to hear that anybody applied for it, as it felt like a losing battle.”
According to a document obtained by Shasta Scout and confirmed by the city, Redding solicited 20 firms and individuals “known to engage in this type of service,” and proposals to run the Civic were received from five entities earlier this month.
The first entity listed is a partnership between two individuals: Jeremy Edwardson and Tim Taber. Edwardson currently owns The Soundhouse, a recording studio in Redding. He has connections to Bethel Church, and he was a producer of local conservative docuseries Red White and Blueprint. Taber is the chief strategy officer of Nashville-based entertainment company LiveCo and the founder of faith-based event promoter Transparent Productions.
The second entity is Gate 52, LLC, which is a Beverly Hills-based live entertainment and venue management company. It was founded in 2020 under the name SaveLive, and it was created to work with independent venue owners and promoters, typically in secondary and tertiary markets, to provide a financial lifeline to music venues at risk of closing due to the COVID-19 shutdown. It operates several venues in California and other states.
An entity called “NewCo” was also listed on the document, with a number of entities listed in parenthesis beside it, including event production and live show crew company Heavy AV, digital marketing agency Twiz.io and a company called GFP Response. Online search results did not link “NewCo” to an established company or organization. An individual listed next to the entity named Jacob Reddick also did not have an online presence.
The fourth entity listed was North State Venue Management, LLC. The California business search lists Rick Gurrola as its owner and shows its address located in Cottonwood.
The final entity was VenuWorks, Inc., which is a venue management company based in Ames, Iowa. It manages more than 60 venues across the country and is the nation’s only employee-owned venue management company, according to its website.
The document listing the entities explained that Community Services Director Travis Menne’s office is slated to review the proposals and rank them. Menne did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the RFP process.
Littau said during the State of the City address that the proposals may be presented to the council in October. He told Shasta Scout in a statement today that he was happy to see enthusiasm about the Civic Auditorium, saying he believes some entities have “good financial backing and experience.” But he explained that there may still be challenges ahead, as the auditorium needs a new $5 million HVAC system, among other repairs.
“We have a lot of work to do even after we find a new operator,” he said.
Do you have a correction to share? Email us: editor@shastascout.org.
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Gate52 and VenuWorks look like the best bets. They both manage a number of similar venues in rural areas, and probably have good connections to entertainers. A hearty “No, thanks” to the Bethel guy and his militia buddy, along with whoever the Cottonwood guy might be. Enough amateurs.
Selah
Dear God, please don’t award it to anyone with ties to the crew currently running the Cascade Theater. For years that crown jewel of a venue attracted so many great musical acts that it was sometimes difficult to pick who to see inside of a week. Now it’s mostly tribute bands and local talent shows. It’s shameful how miserably the Cascade is now managed.
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I’m also wary of the proposal by the Bethel-affiliated RW&BP producer and his faith-based event promoter from Nashville. Just what we need: A steady stream of atrocious worship-music bands and artists. Riff rock with the lead singer wailing and shrieking anthems about how the sacrificial blood of a human scapegoat who was tortured and murdered has magically washed away our inherited, inescapable original sin. Let them run that grift at Bethel’s auditorium/church.
The quality of the bookings at the Cascade has definitely slipped, but they would be an improvement over the Bethel bunch. Also, didn’t Cascade offer to host some of the shows originally booked at the Civic by Advance Redding? That might be contributing to the decline.
Selah
The Cascade’s governing board are all in Oregon (Jefferson Live). The booking person? Also in Oregon. Ask anyone who has worked at the Cascade (myself included) and they will tell you that the administration has no local presence and no idea about the local community. They are fine seeing local traditions die, including locally produced productions.
I keep wishing someone could buy the Cascade from them and return it to its roots as a local institution, but I have no idea how that could happen.
It would be a real disservice to the entire region if the city cannot make this site a priority. It’s really telling that an agreement was ever made between a faith based non taxable christian entity ran this facility into the ground all the while grifting the city for more and more tax funds and donating to a tax proposal to further line their pockets. There are only two of these proposals worth considering. The Beverly Hills bases group and the employee owned Iowa based group that already knows how to make it work. I find it laughable that they were so “amazed” that anyone would even answer the RFP. That was their whole sales con job to keep the corrupt Bethel in the loop.
Concerned.. Run the numbers before you grind your axes. Advance Redding was a California public benefit non-profit, not a religious non-profit. The thought that AR “ran it into the ground” is laughable. AR (and the millions of dollars and 1000’s of hours of volunteer labor poured into the facility) took the civic bookings from zero (closed) to 100’s of bookings per year. ARs board was not compensated, and zero dollars flowed from the COR into any pockets at bethel (The audits prove the point). Regardless of how you feel about bethel, or its theology, the numbers are clear, our community was incredibly fortunate to have the civic underwritten by Bethels goodwill for as long as it did.
Great, another extreme far-right management for the Civic?
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Edwards, affiliated with the 7 Mountain Mandate and its mysticism, the Christian white nationalist and militia movements, with people like Patrick Jones, Terry and Sally Rapoza, Carlos Zapata, John Knight, Woody Clendenen, and Colt Roberts, Sean Feucht (a joke of a musician), and the anti-vax movement, and who was active in recalling my supervisor, Mr. Motty, a conservative, award-winning sheriff, is taking a shot at the director of the Civic?
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Edwards is a very good recordist with a very nice studio, and, of course, has every First Amendment right to visit Trump (2019), express his extreme far-right views, promote the far-right’s relationship with“our friends back in D.C. that are working and advocating on our behalf,” and produce their media for them. I guess if Redding and Shasta County wanted to keep promoting its badge of Trumpism, he would be a good choice. And I imagine recording Christian mu$ic has been way more lucrative than running the civic. But is it ethical to use taxpayer money to promote social-political extremism?
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When using taxpayer money, shouldn’t we look for non-political, non-partisan, secular marketing that promotes America’s representative democracy and civic engagement?
Your comments go the heart of an ongoing problem for our area. How do we promote to the outside world while presenting ourselves as Shastanistan? We come off as a community of uneducated, knuckle-dragging political and religious extremists, and we wonder why medical professionals and entrepreneurs avoid settling here.
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We are surrounded by natural resources and recreational opportunities that rival those of Bend, OR. Bend has no trouble attracting the quality of talent and levels of investment that we struggle for. The reasons are easy to fathom. Bend is effortlessly progressive, cool, and fun; Redding is willfully and self-righteously pig-ignorant, ass-backwards, and angry.
Point of clarification: I’ve had a number of in depth conversations with Adavnce Redding Board Members about their decision to close. They weren’t skeptical that proposals would be made, they were skeptical that anyone would be willing to provide a proposal that didn’t include significant underwriting from the city. Have any of the five proposals been published? I’d love to see them!
ReddingSkeptic: Thanks for this. We are still awaiting the proposals.
Any proposal will require the landlord, the city, to repair hvac. It’s already big and ugly, when does converting it to a data center become an option? There is water nearby.
Brilliant idea! Put a water sucking monstrosity in an area subject to multi-year drought. I’m sure McConnell will love the idea! Good luck with that.
Selah