VALLEJO — Since 1911, the Empress Theater has shined in downtown Vallejo as an architectural gem. Once a vaudeville venue, a playhouse and a movie theater, it was shuttered for over a decade after the Loma Prieta earthquake. But it was reborn in 2003 and the current operators have revitalized it yet again.
Last September, the venerable venue located on 330 Virginia St. expanded its programming and added a restaurant, offering patrons a reason to visit it from Wednesday to Sunday every week.
The Marquee Club hosts live bands playing blues on Wednesdays and jazz on Thursdays. Patrons can enjoy the music while having dinner, with a menu that includes sandwiches, salads, pizzas and desserts.
On Fridays, the Marquee Supper Club takes diners around the globe, with themed menus inspired in different countries and cultures, while a duet plays background music that pairs well with the food. Sunday morning, it opens from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. for “a kick-back brunch,” with an open menu made to order.
Meanwhile, the adjoining theater programs music and other kinds of shows several evenings each month, with an eclectic mix including Filipino star Marcelito Pomoy last Sunday, a funk opera Oct. 31, and a tribute to ABBA on Nov. 20 and 21.
The Empress has seen many iterations since the Order of the Odd Fellows hired award-winning architect William A. Jones to build it in 1911.
It opened on February 14, 1912, as a vaudeville venue. In the 1920’s, under new owners, it became a playhouse theater. In 1930, a fire gutted the building but Fox West Coast, a theater chain, took over and renovated it, transforming it into a movie theater. The building changed hands and names a couple of times but continued operating until the Loma Prieta earthquake damaged it in 1989.
It remained closed until 2003, when a private investor, the City of Vallejo and the nonprofit foundation Vallejo Center of the Arts (then called Vallejo Community Arts Foundation) united to undertake a seismic retrofit, with the theatre reopening in 2008.
Today, according to Susan MacDonald, who has been part of the Vallejo Center of the Arts board for the last 19 years, the city owns the theater while the marquee is leased from a private owner.
When they started the renovations, the theater was a mess, MacDonald said. “We had to take the entire ceiling out,” she said. “The only thing left was the neon cloud you can still see.”
The nonprofit managed a capital campaign that raised $7 million to complete the retrofit and other improvements. Donors, mostly businesses, came not only from Vallejo, but from the whole Bay Area, because, MacDonald said, “this is not a Vallejo theater, it’s a regional theater.”
Other renovations were necessary to bring the Empress up to current standards. The stage wasn’t big enough to accommodate a symphony orchestra, so they raised funds to expand it. And the sound and lighting needed upgrades.
“Now we have a $200,000 JBL sound system and a $200,000 light system,” MacDonald said. “We got state of the art everything. So we just kept raising funds to raise the bar.”
This upgraded system is essential, according to Jay Johnson, the new general manager of the Empress, who started last January and has shaken things up at the theater.
“My goal is to get the musician vibe back here,” Johnson said. “When musicians are happy, they play one way, and when they're not happy, they play another way.”
He added that the building has a spirit, and it comes alive when patrons are listening to music and enjoying themselves. “You can feel the building go, ‘This is what I want,’” he said.
Johnson has a background in digital operations, technology management, video, film and music production, and he’s a musician who opened for Kiss and Aerosmith with his own band.
At the Empress, he wears many hats, including managing the sound system for every show. But one of his biggest accomplishments so far, he said, has been revamping the entire software infrastructure.
“Ticketing system, new website, ordering, menus, design, everything tied into a central database,” he said. “Now it gives us great tracking for P&L and all the different pieces of the puzzle, to maximize what we're providing for the community.”
This precise tracking shows that revenues have increased 66% since January, according to Johnson, and the restaurant has been a boon for the business.
The success of the menu rests on Dianna Quatraro, who has been at the Empress for a year and manages the front and back of the house. She also screens private rentals and assists with bookings and catering for private events.
Quatraro owned a popular café deli on First Street in Benicia for 10 years, Dianna’s Bakery. She was already providing the Empress with baked goods when she was hired.
“We open the doors of the theater at 7 p.m., but we open the Marquee Club at 5:30 p.m. for dinner,” Quatraro said, “so if you're going out for a night, you can come here, eat and relax, and then just walk on over to the theater.”
Both Quatraro and Johnson emphasized that they want to diversify the types of shows presented at the Empress. “It can be music, it can be dance, it can be comedy. It can be anything,” Johnson said. “We also have a film projector, we can show movies.”
They also want to diversify the audience. “We’re trying to reach into every single community and represent the entire population of Vallejo,” Johnson said.
They have tried shows catered to a younger audience, but they weren’t able to sell enough tickets. Still, they are thinking about a potential hip-hop series, said Quatraro, as well as more comedy shows.
The biggest challenge is marketing, Johnson said, because they don’t have dedicated staff to do it. He recognized he doesn’t have much outreach into the Hispanic population, something he wants to improve. They have also just started publicity at a larger level with a billboard on I-80 and ads by the Ferry building.
Both Johnson and Quatraro are passionate about the Empress. “I'm all in,” he said. “Dianna's all in. I believe in this place. I believe in everything that we're doing. I believe in live music and live theatre. It's all we have left as humans. Pretty soon, it's going to be even less when AI takes over everything. But that human interaction is magic.”
MacDonald concurs. “There's nothing more powerful than music. It takes you back to every moment in time that you cherished. That's what I love about it.”
But, she added, without patrons, there is no theater. “It's not just about putting on shows. It’s also about buying a ticket because if people don't come, we can't survive.”
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