‘The Joan’ is here: Liberty Station cuts the ribbon on new performing arts center

After eight years of planning and fundraising and two years of construction, the long-anticipated Joan and Irwin Jacobs Performing Arts Center opened to the public Sept. 5 at Liberty Station in Point Loma.

“The Joan,” as the center is nicknamed, is the new permanent home of San Diego’s Cygnet Theatre. It also will offer performance and exhibit spaces for area dance, choral, visual art and other arts organizations.

The 42,166-square-foot, $43.5 million arts complex at the southeast corner of Roosevelt and Truxtun roads has attracted national attention for how it has taken shape inside the long-shuttered 1942-era Building 178, a former recreation and retail space left over from the old Naval Training Center that once occupied the Liberty Station commercial and cultural complex.

On Sept. 5, officials with Arts District Liberty Station, which owns the building, and Cygnet Theatre held a ribbon-cutting ceremony where a new 5-foot-tall red block letter sign was unveiled bearing The Joan’s name in honor of underwriter Joan Jacobs, who with her husband, Irwin, gave $10 million toward the center. She died May 6, 2024, just four months after the project broke ground.

Arts District Liberty Station President and Chief Executive Lisa Johnson said The Joan is the most ambitious adaptive reuse project in the district’s 25-year history.

Seeing it all come to fruition in recent months has been deeply satisfying, Johnson said. “I’ve had more than one moment with this building where my breath was taken away and I was overwhelmed with emotion when I saw what we’d done.”

Those sentiments were shared by Cygnet Theatre co-founders Bill Schmidt and Sean Murray, who had long dreamed of finding a permanent home for their 22-year-old company, which started in a Rolando-area strip mall near San Diego State University and then spent the past 17 years at San Diego’s Old Town Theatre.

“When we started to look at this actual building, it was far beyond our wildest imagination,” said Murray, Cygnet’s artistic director. “I just am stunned sometimes at really how beautiful it is. I look at it and think, ‘This is real?’”

Schmidt, Cygnet’s executive director, said “I like to remind people that this isn’t Bill and Sean’s theater. This is our gift to San Diego. We’re so honored to be able to do that. Without all of the patrons and supporters, we would be nothing, so we share it all with them.”

There’s still $5 million to be raised for The Joan project, but Johnson said she’s confident the campaign will be completed in full. “We’re very close to 88% of the total we need raised. That’s just a small amount to go to close that gap.”

Historic preservation rules restrict how the old Navy buildings at Liberty Station can be renovated. But because Building 178 was remodeled twice after 1942, the architects for The Joan project were only required to keep the original walls.

That allowed the central, non-original area of the building to be fully demolished to make way for the proscenium-style 282-seat Joseph Clayes III Theater, which takes up two stories on the basement and ground-floor levels.

The Joan also includes the 150-seat Dottie Studio Theater, named after San Diego philanthropist Dorothea Laub, plus a box office, dressing rooms, green rooms, a costume shop, rehearsal and orchestra spaces, an art gallery, a patio and bathrooms.

Liberty Station counts down to opening of new performing arts center

Moving to The Joan has been good for Cygnet Theatre so far, said Schmidt, who added that “Our subscription numbers are way up and ticket sales as well.”

To kick off its first season in the new space, Cygnet is presenting Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman’s Broadway classic “Follies,” which opens Wednesday, Sept. 10, and runs through Sunday, Oct. 12.

The rest of the seven-show 2025-26 season includes the comedy “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” Oct. 8-Nov. 9; the annual “A Christmas Carol” Nov. 26-Dec. 28; “Cygnet’s A Magical Holiday: Christmas at The Joan” Dec. 10-28; “Somewhere Over the Border” Feb. 18-March 15; “The Lehman Trilogy” March 25-April 19; and “The SpongeBob Musical” June 10-July 5.

As part of Cygnet’s lease with Arts District Liberty Station, it will plan its seasons to accommodate performance periods reserved for other local performing arts groups.

Malashock Dance, which also is headquartered at Liberty Station, plans to present a program at The Joan next spring. And the San Diego Women’s Chorus will have one next summer.