The heavy metal door slammed shut behind us, blocking out the noise and piss-odor of San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. A Raggedy Ann-style doll caught my eye. She was impaled on a bit of vertical conduit where a wall had once stood. Her body was erect, but her head slumped forward as though she were examining the stains on her gingham dress. I glanced at director Susannah Martin.

“Wow,” she said, sounding how I felt: daunted, excited, horrified, thrilled.

Ever since Mugwumpin, the ensemble of which I am the artistic director, first conceived of Future Motive Power—an original piece inspired by the life and work of Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla, a rival of Thomas Edison in the development of commercial electricity—we imagined the performance would unfold in a space that could evoke the makeshift laboratories the inventor installed in Manhattan’s West Side. We have no permanent performance home in San Francisco, so our choices were broad. The show demanded a wide-open yet mysterious space, in which the audience would feel great anticipation but have no idea what to expect. A theatre, even a black box, wouldn’t work. In recent years, Mugwumpin has created several one-off experiments for nontheatre spaces—a motel, an office, an alley—and we wanted to apply what we had learned to Future Motive Power.

We immediately turned our attention to the Central Market Street neighborhood, a stretch of vacant buildings and improvised cardboard shelters erected by San Francisco’s large homeless population. As much as San Franciscans might advocate for the homeless, the erratic behavior, noxious odors and discarded needles found in this part of the city and the adjoining Tenderloin tend to discourage pedestrian traffic. Local government has long grappled with how to address this problem. Most recently, plans to transform the area by creating an arts district have been brewing, beginning with pop-up art projects in vacant properties. Perfect for Mugwumpin’s site-specific Future Motive Power.

A good friend at the Planning Department connected me to the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, and they in turn directed me to the San Francisco Arts Commission. There, I reached Judy Nemzoff, program director of the Community Arts and Education Program.

“Listen, I have some ideas,” Judy told me when we first talked. “We’re very, very interested in facilitating projects like this—particularly with groups who have some experience with pop-ups.” The ease of our conversation surprised me—I had expected to perform a little polyester-suit salesmanship. Instead Judy assured me, “I’ll make some calls, and let’s be in touch next week. Stay on me—don’t be afraid to be a pest!”

The next week, during which I had indeed been a pest, Judy called me back, saying, “I saw a place yesterday that you have to see. I warn you: it’s raw. I mean, raw.”

A few days later I met with Jack, the building’s elderly owner, who told me in a quavering voice that he believed artists would ultimately transform the Central Market Street neighborhood. He could donate his space to Mugwumpin for the entire rehearsal and performance period—three months—rent free. Sure, we would have to install a temporary bathroom, but doing so would cost less than the rent on a rehearsal studio and theatre. 

The next step was bringing Susannah to the space. (I would be playing the role of Tesla, to whom I bear a striking resemblance.) After we shivered at the macabre vision of the impaled doll, we began to wander around assessing the space. Here, we’d have to lay down plywood to reinforce the floorboards softened by rot; we could use these stairs that lead down to the basement; wouldn’t it be great to have Tesla emerge from there? 

But suddenly Susannah looked at me, touching her throat. “Uh-oh,” she murmured. “This place has mold—and lots of it.” A spot on the wall showed exposed sheetrock smeared with something that looked like soot: black mold.

“I’m particularly allergic,” said Susannah, “but it’s not good for anyone to be around.” I thought of Mugwumpin performer and co-founder Joe Estlack, who could potentially land in the emergency room with a mold-triggered asthma attack. Back in the fresh air, I called the owner, who confirmed my fears that mold remediation for a non-paying tenant was indeed out of the question. Like fog rolling in from Ocean Beach, a dark realization crept over me: We couldn’t use this space.

“Oh damn,” said Judy Nemzoff when I called her. I had imagined landlords lining up outside of her Van Ness Avenue office to be a part of this new arts district but the gravity in her voice disabused me of that idea. “Let me make some calls,” she said. “In the meantime, put the word out that you’re looking.”

I began the hunt at home. Mugwumpin had recently moved into new offices that are part of the 5M Project, a several-acre culture-and-entrepreneurship hub anchored at the San Francisco Chronicle building. Surely within all that property hid a space perfect for our needs. But the 5M Project, as it turned out, had been too successful—all spaces were full. We decided to cast the net wider by trawling Craigslist.

I met with Kevin, a broker, at a storefront a few blocks from the Mugwumpin offices. Inside the large empty space, I envisioned segments of material from Future Motive Power in various corners. It even had wood floors, which would be far less punishing on the performers’ bodies than the concrete of some spaces I’d seen. I took a deep breath and explained our situation to Kevin.

“Well, I suppose I can take my broker fee as an in-kind donation,” he shrugged. “Knowing the owner, this could be something he’s interested in.” But our offer was too low. If we could find more money, perhaps we could move forward. Where, I thought, could I possibly find a few thousand dollars on such short notice?

That evening, I attended the Mayoral Arts Forum, a gathering of 10 candidates for mayor, where they explained how their platforms addressed arts community needs. Several candidates, particularly sitting mayor Ed Lee, expressed intentions to fill vacant Mid-Market buildings with pop-up performances and exhibits. A plan caught fire in my mind. The next morning, I showered Mayor Lee’s office with e-mails: A pop-up performance just like he had described was in a nascent stage, and an investment of a mere $2,000 would let him point to Mugwumpin’s successful project as the initiative’s first step. Then I called Kevin, the broker. “I think we can proceed,” I told him. 

After several days of negotiations, Kevin arranged a meeting with the building owner, and said he would have a preliminary agreement for us to sign. That morning, I put on a newly ironed shirt and, whistling a little tune, pulled up my e-mail. I clicked on one from Kevin and scanned it: “…unfortunately…change of heart…cancel our meeting….” I grabbed my phone.

“Apparently his wife talked him out of it,” Kevin explained. “She’s afraid of being sued. Sorry. They don’t wish to continue the conversation.”

An impasse: The performers and crew couldn’t start rehearsals without contracts, and I couldn’t create contracts without a space. We gathered and agreed on a deadline a few weeks away; if we don’t find a space by then, we’d have to cancel the production.

Judy Nemzoff had two new leads for me. First, I had to call Leiasa Beckham, from the Northern California Community Loan Fund, which had recently contracted with the city to play matchmaker between arts and culture organizations and potential landlords in the Mid-Market area. Second, I should attend the Mid-Market Arts Retreat, where arts organizations from the area would meet to discuss their needs and desires. City officials, landlords and reps from Burning Man and Twitter—recent transplants to the neighborhood—would all be in attendance.

Will Thatcher, the lone landlord in attendance at the Mid-Market Arts Retreat, clad in bow-tie and owlish spectacles, was a highlight for me. Thatcher had recently signed a long-term lease with the nonprofit SF Camerawork to take over a second-floor space that had been empty for years. The space would now house offices and a small gallery.

A few days later, I met with Leiasa Beckham, who had midwived the deal with SF Camerawork, in the NCCLF offices, within spitting distance of the Powell Street cable car turnaround. NCCLF is a nonprofit loan fund that works with other nonprofits, providing loans and information toward acquiring property for operation. Leiasa and her boss, Josh Simon, focus a great deal of attention on matching the right property with the right organization. While they understand artists’ frustration with the landlords’ seeming intransigence, Leiasa cautioned that a bad match could prove disastrous for everyone.

We meandered through the Tenderloin until we arrived at the property she had in mind, a building recently acquired by the San Francisco Film Commission. The basement space was far from ideal, but we were desperate: It was a week before our deadline. Days passed before a response finally came from the Film Commission: The space was nly approved for film use, not theatre.

The next day I awoke with dread. Out of time and options, we would have to discard months of work and planning, while our artists, all of whom had turned down other jobs for Future Motive Power, would have gaping holes in their schedules. I despondently opened my laptop. At the top of my e-mail list were three messages from Judy Nemzoff: 

“Call me as soon as you get this!”

I grabbed my phone.

“Can you get downtown in 45 minutes?” Judy asked.

I raced on my bike to the Old Mint, an imposing granite structure in a neoclassical style, right across from Mugwumpin’s offices. The building’s sales and events manager, Tamara Hayes, a spunky woman with corkscrewing hair, met me by a side door. “From what I understand of your needs, I thought the vault level of the Mint might work,” she said, swinging open the large steel door.

As my eyes adjusted, I saw an impossibly long hallway with polished flagstones, the walls regularly interrupted by open vault doors, each six inches thick and steel, with elaborate locking mechanisms that brought to mind bank-heist films. “Wow,” I gasped.

Maintaining a steady burble of information about the building, Hayes brought me into a vast chamber. “Right now we’re under the building’s central courtyard, which is exactly the same size and shape as this room,” she said. Conduits and ducts wormed across the ceiling, creating a gritty industrial atmosphere, just as we wanted for our main performance space. I tapped on a strangely translucent, three-foot diameter plastic hemisphere attached to the wall, which, Tamara explained, once housed a camera array when this “mystery room” was used for secret purposes in the ’80s. My awe grew as she dipped deeper into history: The first federal building on the West Coast, it had been built in response to the Gold Rush; it was the only building in the area to survive the 1906 earthquake and fire, when it housed a third of the country’s gold reserves. I became delightfully disoriented in the labyrinthine rooms.

At a certain point in the performance we planned to split the audience and move it into different spaces. This building would give us a dizzying choice of corners and hallways and vaults in which to install various aspects of the show. The J.P. Morgan segment would obviously be set in one of the bank vaults; Edison’s Hall of Wonders could be in this odd hallway to nowhere, pocked with arched nooks. Trying to control the excitement in my voice, I launched into my well-practiced pitch. Tamara listened, nodded and even smiled slightly. “I think we can work with that.” I almost collapsed with relief.

In the end, the arrangement did have its challenges. Our original performance schedule stretched through the pre-holiday season, during which the upstairs rooms of the Old Mint, grand and opulent as ballrooms, are rented out at premium rates for parties. Both events couldn’t coexist, so we had to shift our entire calendar to perform Jan. 6-29. In the process we nearly lost two performers.

Nevertheless, this near-catastrophe resolved better than I could have imagined. The new venue is inspiring interest and curiosity in San Francisco residents, few of whom have ever seen the building’s vaults. Several stakeholders now have a vested interest in the show’s success, from the departments of the city government that want to see a successful pop-up performance, to the SF Museum and Historical Society, which is raising funds to transform the Old Mint into a museum.

Yet looking at our epic search in the context of the city’s cultural health leaves me frustrated. A Mid-Market arts district would create a center of gravity that San Francisco’s theatre community currently lacks. While I have been deeply encouraged by the commitment of several individuals within city government, I also understand now that the problems of Mid-Market can’t be addressed by good intentions. So long as the empty buildings remain in the hands of property owners who have only disincentives for bringing in artist-tenants, nothing will change. The buildings have been vacant for so long that the costs of renovations and codecompliance would climb skyward faster than the proverbial beanstalk. Obscuring these truths with empty promises helps nothing.

But a recent conversation with Judy Nemzoff left room for hope. She described a possible “perfect storm situation”: First, an ordinance that requires office buildings in downtown to have a percentage of their budgets go toward public art projects (usually anonymous-looking sculptures under which suits might eat their lunches) is in the process of adjustment to allow developers to opt to put that money into a trust dedicated to art in the city. Second, advocates in the Mayor’s Office are working to establish a funders’ collaborative around the Mid-Market efforts, to better leverage currently uncoordinated philanthropic efforts. Finally, part of the city’s well-publicized plan to lure Twitter corporate headquarters to the neighborhood included deep tax breaks for the company in return for a commitment to providing “community benefit.” These potential investments in capital—coupled with continuing efforts by the Arts Commission and its community partners to activate the public and street spaces with cultural events—could slowly build momentum toward real change.

But for now, my cohorts at Mugwumpin and I are grateful that our latest work has found a home.

Christopher W. White is a performance and theatre artist, puppeteer, musician and writer.