Fox Oakland Development Team

“It’s challenging, but it’s an awful lot of fun,” said Victor Perry, project executive for Turner Construction of Oakland, the contractor. Jim Heilbronner of Architectural Dimensions in Walnut Creek is the lead architect, and architects Kurt Schindler of ELS Architecture inBerkeley and Phred Starkweather of Starkweather Bondy Architecture in Oakland also have worked on the project.

Structural engineer Hratch Kouyoumdjian is responsible for the seismic retrofitting of the historic structure. His other projects have included Oakland City Hall, the Police Administration Building and the Rotunda.

“We’re spending millions of dollars to keep the building seismically safe that no one will ever see and hopefully never need,” Tagami said on a recent tour of the Fox, a short walk from his Rotunda office.

Other new additions include state-of-the-art sound and lighting systems, new heating and air conditioning, mechanical and electrical systems, and bathrooms, as well as cable and Internet access. All that currently remains of the office and retail wings is the historic brick façade, which will front new three-story buildings to be occupied by the arts school.

Then there’s the painstaking work of making what was old look new again. For instance, crews have been working – inch by inch, 200 feet above the floor – to restore the theater’s intricately molded plaster ceiling, which has been re-anchored. The job, which includes painting both faux wood grain and metallic colors on the starburst-shaped plaster, involves nine colors.

“There are so few projects like this, that when one comes along, you take it,” Perry said. “We walked in and it was in ruins – not beyond repair, but it was very old and worn. It’s going to be absolutely stunning when we open it.”

Yet another challenge has been Tagami’s pledge that half the construction subcontracting work would go to local businesses, 20 percent of them small local businesses – more than doubling the city requirements of 20 and 10 percent, respectively.

City officials agreed that Tagami and Turner could negotiate contracts, rather than simply award them to the lowest bidders. Tagami and Turner officials then conducted 18 outreach events for local contractors, and opened a center and conducted classes to assist bidders. They also broke the work up into smaller packages that small firms could afford to compete for, extended the procurement schedule, created a revolving loan program and speeded payments for subcontractors.

The result has been that 51 percent of the subcontractors are local and 21 percent small local businesses. But Tagami and Turner officials admit the process has not always been easy, which has prompted some complaints.

One subcontractor who has few complaints is Douglas Gilmore, president of Oakland-based Gilmore Steel, which was awarded $1.2 million in contracts and has borrowed $125,000 from the loan program to get started.

While there were some rough spots, “they went above and beyond the call of duty to help me accomplish what I need to on that project,” said Gilmore, who is African American. “It’s a big job for my company.”