In June, KEXP and our partners at the San Francisco nonprofit Blue Bear School of Music submitted a proposal to renovate and activate the Doolan-Larson House and Storefronts. This property, owned by San Francisco historic preservation organization San Francisco Heritage, sits on the iconic corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco. The KEXP proposal presents a vision for the facility to serve as a place where community can gather, explore, and connect through music and music discovery, complete with globally-recognized radio broadcasting, live performance, and music education. The initial plans for the project create a welcoming “third place” for year-round daily activation, a rooftop venue for live music and community celebrations, broadcast facilities for radio shows originating from the corner of Haight and Ashbury, and a full floor dedicated to Blue Bear’s music education programming.
San Francisco Heritage has owned and stewarded the Doolan-Larson property as part of its preservation mission since 2017, when it was donated by longtime resident and owner Norm Larson. This gift marked the beginning of a years-long, inclusive public process to identify a partner for the adaptive reuse and activation of the property. Three teams, including the team led by KEXP, submitted their full proposals in June of this year. In August, the SF Heritage Board made their selection of KEXP’s project as the sole finalist for further consideration.
The proposal was presented as a concept that we assume will evolve as plans are finalized and the community is consulted. SF Heritage and KEXP have signed a letter of intent to work together, along with Blue Bear, over the coming months to reach an agreement on the adaptive reuse plan, solicit and gather further input from members of the community, and determine feasibility for construction and project financing, including a potential future capital campaign to fund the project.
Long story short, it’s not a sure thing yet. We do think we can pull this off, but right now we’re at the stage where we’re checking our assumptions and making sure it’s all achievable. The ultimate decision about whether or not to continue pursuing this project into the next phase will be made by the respective Boards of Directors of both KEXP and SF Heritage. We are hopeful that we’ll have an update to share by early 2027.
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Check out the full press release about this announcement here.
Q: Is KEXP relocating to San Francisco?
We're not relocating. We are incredibly honored to be exploring a partnership with San Francisco Heritage, a cultural heritage and advocacy organization that owns the Doolan-Larson House and Storefronts, a historic building on the northwest corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco. Blue Bear School of Music, a music education nonprofit that has been operating in San Francisco for over 50 years, is also involved.
Together, we’re working to determine whether or not it makes sense to continue building a vision and a plan to reimagine and reuse the Doolan-Larson building as a music and cultural center, complete with public gathering space (somewhat akin to KEXP’s Gathering Space at Seattle Center), broadcast facilities, music education spaces, live performance space, and more. KEXP’s headquarters will remain in Seattle, but now our San Francisco based team and San Francisco-based broadcasts could have a permanent home as well.
Q: How are you going to pay for this?
Answering that question is a big part of the next phase of this exploration. Along with Blue Bear School of Music and SF Heritage, we’ll be digging in over the coming months to determine if there is a viable path to raising the funds to complete this project through a dedicated capital campaign. As with the fundrasing campaign to build our facility at Seattle Center, this would involve making special appeals to donors who might be interested in applying their philanthropic dollars towards this project specifically, and the project budget for the construction of KEXP Haight Ashbury would be distinct from KEXP’s general operating budget.
Over the years, many ideas and opportunities for growing our service have come our way. Responsible stewardship of this organization and its resources means doing our best to follow through on promising opportunities to whatever point makes sense from a financial and mission-delivery perspective. No risk, no reward as they say. We think we’ve got something here, and we’re excited to see where this opportunity leads.
Q: Why did KEXP decide to pursue this opportunity? Why the Haight and Ashbury location?
When an opportunity comes up to significantly expand the delivery of our mission to enrich lives by championing music and discovery, we feel that it is our responsibility to take it seriously. We have witnessed the power of operating a welcoming public space through our decade at Seattle Center. We’ve also learned a great deal about the role we can play in the Bay Area music community, and how we can fulfill missing needs in that community. And although there are many possible locations we could have explored for developing a physical home in the Bay, there’s only one Haight Ashbury. We can’t pass up an opportunity to build a hub for music and discovery at the heart of a world-famous neighborhood known globally as an embodiment of art, music, counterculture, and experimentation.
Ultimately, we believe this project could help us generate greater impact in more communities while simultaneously growing our audience and our donor base, and introducing ourselves and our listeners to more artists - particularly artists from a thriving Bay Area music scene that deserves to be celebrated.
Q: What is this “adaptive reuse” going to look like? What’s up with the renderings I’ve seen? Are you messing with a historic property too much?
The KEXP Haight Ashbury proposal includes project renderings that show one of many possible future states for the property, including an indoor/outdoor addition on the roof of the storefronts. Though this addition and the other scenes depicted in the renderings are an intriguing possibility, they are by no means a sure thing. As we refine the project vision, we’ll be focusing on functionality, community benefit, and ensuring the design is fully honoring the historic properties of the building while ensuring long-term use and public access.
KEXP has fairly deep and recent experience with adaptive reuse of a historic building. Our Seattle Center home is a City of Seattle Landmarked facility that was built as part of the 1962 World’s Fair. Our reuse has retained and emphasized the key elements of the historic character of the building while dramatically increasing its day-to-day use, and contributing to the activation and vitality of the neighborhood as a whole. In developing the initial proposal for the project, we worked closely with Page & Turnbull, a San Francisco-based architecture firm dedicated to historic preservation and adaptive reuse.
As an organization steeped in preservation and advocacy on behalf of the tangible history of San Francisco, SF Heritage will ensure that the project meets the Secretary of Interior’s standards for the restoration and rehabilitation of buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. All parties involved are aligned with the vision of this project as a national model of adaptive reuse, and how a historic building can be an active, vital home for contemporary culture.
Q: What exactly are the programming plans for KEXP Haight Ashbury?
We have a long way to go before we’re able to commit to a specific, day-to-day programming plan. That being said, our proposal vision includes the following:
More questions or feedback for us on this project? Drop us a line at haightashbury@kexp.org.
