Ever since the Oaks Theatre was built in 1923, it has been a landmark on Solano, with its bright, standout marquee. Yet Oaks Theater has been empty and gathering dust since 2010, the only sign out front advertising its sale. However, just recently, Touchstone Climbing became the company to finally buy the building. Touchstone Climbing is a well-known climbing company in California, controlling many gyms such as Ironworks in Berkeley and Great Western Power Company in Oakland. The company plans to turn the Oaks Theatre into their newest climbing gym.
Since its closing, there have been many other attempts to reopen the Oaks in some way, but Touchstone has gotten farther than most by submitting a use permit to the City of Berkeley in the beginning of August. The permit takes four to six months to hear back from, so Touchstone must wait for the City’s permission to start building.
Lyn Barraza, the general manager of Berkeley Ironworks, said that one of the reasons that Touchstone decided to open a new gym in the East Bay is because their other nearby gyms have been getting very crowded in recent years.
Touchstone has many members who live around the Solano area, and, as Touchstone has already made climbing gyms from movie theaters, like the Studio in San Jose, Barraza said the Oaks Theatre seemed like a good prospect.
Additionally, the neighborhood around Solano has always been important to the founders of Touchstone, Mark and Debra Melvin. Mark Melvin began rock climbing just above Solano at Indian Rock when he was in college. “I used to run from my dorm room to Indian Rock to boulder. Within a few months, I met Debra there, she having graduated from Oakland’s [California College of the Arts]. We’ve been climbing together ever since,” Melvin said. They both find the Oaks Theatre an important building on Solano and want to respect its history.
Touchstone is planning to keep the Oaks’ original marquee and facade in the front, while creating climbing walls inside. The theatre itself has tall ceilings, as are necessary for a climbing gym. The climbing walls will be built by Walltopia, a company that creates walls in a newer style than those in other climbing gyms around the East Bay that allow for more creative climbs, using types of holds that are unavailable at some other nearby gyms.
The new gym would also focus mainly on bouldering, a form of climbing with lower walls and without ropes or harnesses. Zach Wright, the director and a head coach of Team Touchstone, the company’s youth climbing team, believes that this added bouldering space will be an improvement on climbing in the East Bay.
Since the bouldering areas at Touchstone’s other nearby gyms are rather small, “Having extra space would benefit both our team and our members by reducing the impact on the bouldering at Ironworks and Great Western,” Wright said.
Pegasus Books on Solano hopes that the Oaks being filled will help their store. Jeff Armbruster, an employee at Pegasus, said that the weekend after the Oaks closed, business at Pegasus fell by around ten percent. Armbruster and Nathan Byren, another employee, said that they still think a movie theater “might be more of a draw,” but hope that a climbing gym will still bring new people to Solano, and that doing “something is still better than nothing.”
While there has been excitement from nearby businesses and neighbors, there have been some complaints as well. For one, traffic and parking, which is already a problem on Solano, will only increase with the new climbing gym.
Additionally, some people in the neighborhood are disappointed that the Oaks Theatre will not continue to be an arts or a performing venue, though Sophie Hahn, the Berkeley City Councilwoman for District Five, which includes the Solano area, said that “[Touchstone’s owners] were open to considering musical and arts-oriented events.” At some other Touchstone locations there are both permanent and changeable art installations, such as murals and month-to-month features of local artists. Including art in this type of manner at the Oaks would definitely be a possibility, Barraza said.
As well as climbing, the gym hopes to include workout spaces and rooms for classes. However, Touchstone has said they will not include a cafe in the gym. “They want to support the existing businesses, not compete with them,” Hahn said.
If everything goes smoothly, Touchstone hopes that the gym will be open for business early in 2019 or even late 2018. Touchstone hopes that their plan to turn the Oaks Theatre into a climbing gym will create a space that will support climbers, neighbors, and other businesses on Solano.