It’s not everyday that a brand new music venue lands in town, so when the Alberta Rose Theatre opens its doors for the Alberta Arts District’s Last Thursday celebration on June 24, it will be a momentous event indeed. The new theater, which until late last year served as a church and community center, is the latest in a bevy of new businesses opening in the ever growing Alberta Arts District, which spans some 20 blocks across inner Northeast Portland.
Portland’s live music scene has historically been clustered in a handful of venues along Burnside in downtown – Crystal Ballroom, Roseland Theater, the Satyricon, Dante’s, and in recent years, the Doug Fir Lounge, all come to mind. Some scattered venues throughout the southeast quadrant of the city have, until recently, accounted for the balance. When Wonder Ballroom opened in Northeast Portland in 2005, the venue’s success represented something of a breakthrough for a section of the city that was only beginning to assert its cultural identity. The Alberta Rose’s location at the east end of Alberta Street, arguably the city’s most organically funky commercial district, does the same for a neighborhood that, two decades ago, boasted only boarded up storefronts, rampant graffiti tagging, and one of the least enviable reputations in an otherwise pleasantly livable city.
When I walked into the Alberta Rose Theatre on a cloudy June afternoon, the place was a bustle of activity. Ladders were carried back and forth across the lobby, power tools buzzed from all corners of the theater, and the sense of energy and anticipation was palpable and familiar. It’s the same energy that pervades every new business popping up on this boisterously independent street.
“I think we lucked out with Alberta,” owner Joe Cawley tells me. “I live in Southeast, and I was hoping to have something closer to home. At first I was a little concerned about location and access from other parts of town, but now I wouldn’t pick another part of town if I could. The community has been so incredibly supportive, both the residents and the businesses.” It’s a sentiment I can confirm. When the pink liquor license application notice first appeared on the box office window in March, it was the subject of not one, but two overheard conversations as I wandered down Alberta one afternoon. Tellingly, both were excited at the possibilities for the classic building that once anchored a very different commercial district than the one that exists today.
Built in 1927, the building first served as a neighborhood movie theater, finally closing in 1968 before being reincarnated as a church. “I spent a couple months last summer traveling up and down the West Coast looking at theaters,” Cawly says as he surveys the work that has transformed the Alberta Rose from a poorly maintained church to a regal concert venue. “One reason why I did particularly love this theater is because it is an old atmospheric theater. Those were my favorite theaters, those couple that had this outside feeling to it.” It’s easy to see what he means. With the lights dimmed, it would be easy to imagine you were sitting in the courtyard of an old European castle. There are no forced or cheesy thematic elements though - just a subtle nod to the wide-open security of a peaceful summer night.
Some additional light on the building’s storied history was provided by an unexpected visitor not long before I dropped in. “The other day this guy came in and he was just hanging around in the lobby while I was working,” talent buyer Adam East relates, “and Joe and I ended up talking to him. He’d owned this place 1965-1975, and he was coming in to check it out. It was the first black-owned movie theater west of the Mississippi. It was the only place [in Portland] where you could see Shaft when it first came out.”
It’s a historical footnote that addresses the mixed blessing of Alberta’s development. Boarded up storefronts are becoming a rarity, but the businesses that have emerged serve a largely white clientele in a neighborhood that has become increasingly homogeneous as the effects of gentrification manifest themselves. East hopes the Alberta Rose can now help to change all that. “We’re bringing in rock ‘n’ roll music, which spans all racial barriers,” he says. “We’re happy we’re going to be able to bring it for everybody.”
On Thursday, they will have their chance. Starting at 6pm, a slew of local acts will christen the brand new stage, including local psych rockers Celilo. The evening will be capped off by what promises to be a memorable performance by the MarchFourth Marching Band. With reasonable chances for warm, sunny weather, the first Last Thursday of the summer should provide an ample audience as the local ensemble parade their way down Alberta to the theater entrance at the corner of 30th Avenue. If all goes as planned, it will be a celebration worthy of the grand old theater and its long overdue reintroduction to the cultural life of the neighborhood.
The Alberta Rose Theatre is located at 3000 NE Alberta. Grand Opening is Thursday, June 24, doors at 5:30, show at 6:00.
