Photo by Michael Strickland
San Francisco's chamber-music organizations (and several other important enterprises) have suffered major dislocation for a year now while the Veterans Memorial Building is undergoing major seismic retrofitting. Herbst Theatre in the building served as their main venue; the Green Room and several halls of various sizes in the building are also being missed.
When will the building, Herbst, and the San Francisco Opera's planned (Dede) Wilsey Center for Opera be available? A current report in SF Civic Center Blog says, discouragingly:
According to security workers at the War Memorial Performing Arts Complex, the project is supposed to be completed "sometime near the end of next year, maybe, if everything goes according to plan, which it usually doesn't."
Let us hope it's only a temporary indigestion speaking, similar to Scrooge's rationalization of Marley's ghost. Meanwhile, San Francisco Performances, Philharmonia Baroque, and others are making do with SFJAZZ, S.F. Conservatory of Music, The Nourse. All of those are not bad substitutes, but one is acoustically inferior, two are significantly smaller than the 900-seat Herbst, and The Nourse is mostly taken up by events of the owner, City Arts & Lectures.
As to the blog report about the replacement of the building's copper roof, is it possible that this "ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity" and a price of $3.25 a pound had to be used, instead of another perfectly fine metal, costing half as much or less?