After change of operators, Sacramento’s Crest Theatre plots its next act (2025)

Robert “Bob” Emerick has spent his summer fixing the marquee lights above the Crest Theatre downtown, restringing the grand drape and requesting quotes for carpet cleaning.

Emerick, the building’s owner, has been back in charge of day-to-day operations at the K Street theater since May, when its managers of five years, struggling with a prolonged downturn in business, handed the venue back over to him. Now Emerick and his daughter, Ellie Emerick, are navigating the theater through the sometimes-rocky transition and, generally, getting the old venue back to its feet.

This summer marks the latest reinvention for The Crest, which opened in 1913 as a vaudeville theater and has changed names at least twice since then. While the theater’s calendar is steadily filling out with events, in many ways, Emerick is still figuring out The Crest’s next act.

With a capacity of 975, a movie screen and a stage, over the years the building has been used as a movie theater, a concert venue, and for film festivals, stand-up shows, parties, graduations, naturalization ceremonies and weddings. Emerick said the theater doesn’t show any one type of film, and major blockbusters are off the table, because they require a more expensive projector than he has.

He’s taking suggestions about what he should show. He’s considering hosting “Free Movie Tuesdays,” to draw people back to K Street. And he’s planning showings of silent films accompanied by a live orchestra.

If it can be done with a screen and a stage, Emerick said, it can be done at the Crest.

‘We couldn’t continue’

The theater’s most recent operating company, GD Theatres, Emerick said, was formed by one of the Crest’s longtime promoters.

GD Theatres took over managing the Crest in 2019, he said. Soon after, the pandemic hit and the downtown commute abated, said Robert Alvis, who served as the theater’s general manager from October 2019 until May, and is a vice president of GD Theatres.

Restaurants in the area closed, which further diminished foot traffic, Alvis said. There were fewer people passing by the Crest each day and spotting advertisements for upcoming shows.

Though moviegoers eventually began to return and concerts were resurrected, the change didn’t happen fast enough, Alvis said. The Crest sold just 30 or 40 tickets to a showing of “Chinatown” earlier this year, compared to 100 tickets to the same film in February 2020.

“It was such a slow crawl,” Alvis said. “We just couldn’t sustain the losses we were taking on. It became a situation where we couldn’t continue.”

Alvis said GD Theatres made rent payments late. In April, he and his business partner informed Emerick that they would not be able to make their payment for the following month. Ultimately, they decided, the company would part ways with The Crest, and hand operations back over to Emerick in May.

During the transition, some customers have been left in the lurch.

GD Theatres used Eventbrite for ticketing. Emerick transitioned to Ticketmaster, because it offered lower fees, he said.

But The Crest still has Eventbrite shows on its calendar, and Emerick said he has no control over the ticketing because the contracts are with GD Theatres. Learning this, he said, some promoters have pulled out of shows.

Typically, he said, when an act cancels, he refunds customers. But because he doesn’t have access to the ticketing system, he can’t.

Alvis said GD Theatres is working to refund customers. He said all who purchased a ticket to one of their canceled shows should get their money back. But he acknowledged that the process has been slow.

“We know it’s slower than people want,” Alvis said. “We are processing them as we can.”

Alvis didn’t respond to a request to discuss follow-up questions.

Still, as the Emericks work through repairs and schedule out new shows, things are starting to take shape. He said he’s hosting promoters and talent agencies, to prove the theater a capable venue for performers.

“At this point, I’m proving myself to the community — that I can run a good show out of this venue,” Emerick said, “And if I can prove it, they’ll come.”

A milestone for Sacramento

Before the theater was built, its property at the corner of 10th and K streets was a stable and blacksmith shop, neighbored by some small residential buildings, saloons, restaurants and a carriage-painting building, according to an environmental assessment of the site.

The theater opened in January 1913 as a vaudeville venue called “The Empress.” The Chamber of Commerce president hailed it as a milestone for the city and “a testimonial to its inevitably splendid future,” the Bee reported at the time.

In 1918 the theater was renamed the “The Hippodrome,” and in the 1920s, it began offering movie showings in addition to the live entertainment.

In the decades that followed, the theater changed operators and underwent extensive renovations a handful of times. It was renamed again in the 1940s, after the marquee collapsed and killed a woman in 1946. When it reopened it was called “The Crest.” It went through a tumultuous period in the late 1970s and 1980s, when multiple theater companies operated it in quick succession over the course of a few years, and at one point it shuttered for a 14-month stretch.

Emerick, an engineer by training, found his way to the Crest in 2011 by way of another of Sacramento’s stately venues: The Tower Theatre.

It was the Great Recession, and Emerick’s engineering firm had recently sold. Remaining in his industry, he said, would have required traveling the world, away from his family.

Emerick saw the Tower Theatre up for sale, and was intrigued by the idea of owning it. His family had been in Sacramento for generations. As he contemplated buying the Tower, he learned The Crest was also on the market.

Emerick acquired The Crest and built a restaurant — the Empress Tavern — in the adjacent basement, which had previously housed two additional, struggling movie screens, constructed after a fire in the 1990s. He added brick archways inspired by a restaurant he’d visited in St. Petersburg, Russia.

A stage and a screen

Downstairs at The Crest, the wall of the green room is marked with a set of footprints. They were left behind by Kurt Cobain, Emerick said. Though they were painted over once, and restored by an art conservationist, the diamond criss-cross pattern of Converse soles is still discernable.

In the projection room at the back of the theater, there is a film splicer, a set of old projectors, and a toilet and sink for film projectionists working long shifts.

Emerick’s mother once watched movies at the Crest for a nickel. Ellie Emerick, years before her father bought the theater, took the stage there in a dance competition.

Despite its long history in Sacramento, the theater’s biggest challenge, Robert Emerick said, is that there are new generations of residents who’ve never been to the Crest.

On a recent morning, he opened an electrical panel in the theater entryway. His daughter was arranging letter tiles on the carpet, which she would, armed with a suction cup attached to a pole, place on the marquee later to advertise an upcoming show. He flipped a few switches, and the hall came alive with buzzing, pink lights.

The neon on the marquee, which had gone dark, was about 90% lit, Emerick said. The air conditioning system and the plumbing were repaired. The grand drape, which had broken, was restrung to rise and lower manually, and would soon be attached to a motor.

The Empress Tavern, the basement-level restaurant adjoining the theater which shut down during the pandemic, reopened this spring for private events and concerts hosted by a local nonprofit.

The nonprofit, Alchemist Community Development Corporation, offers mentoring programs for small food businesses, and will use the space to teach entrepreneurs the skills they need to operate a brick-and-mortar restaurant and do large-scale catering. It will offer ticketed and free events, and repeating, regular events like monthly bingo, said Shannin Stein, Alchemist’s director of advancement.

The group plans to fully launch over the weekend of the Terra Madre Americas festival, in late September.

“We’re getting it all restarted,” Emerick said. “We’ll get there.”

After CBS News aired a story about the theater’s struggles, he said he received calls from promoters across the country, looking to hold events at The Crest. Meanwhile his daughter, Ellie Emerick, a master’s student studying quantitative economics at the University of California Los Angeles, has spent the summer working at the theater as its chief operating officer and considering whether she may want to get into the business.

Before the pandemic, Robert Emerick said, The Crest had an event or a movie screening every day of the month. He’d like to get back to that schedule, and host one concert each week.

When people in Sacramento think about entertainment, Emerick wants them to think of The Crest.

It hasn’t been the easiest transition, Ellie Emerick said, but they are doing all they can.

“I know there’s a lot of confusion right now. But the new management’s here to stay,” she said. “I know he can do this.”

This story was originally published August 30, 2025 at 5:00 AM.