Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco

When the city of San Francisco first put out feelers for someone to manage the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in the early 2000s, Another Planet Entertainment (APE) senior vp Mary Conde had to do a double take. On one hand, she felt that there was no company better suited to take over the building named after Bill Graham. As APE founders Gregg Perloff, Sherry Wasserman and Steve Welkom all worked alongside the legendary Bay Area promoter. On the other hand, the city was asking for a lot of money to run a nearly 100-year-old venue that Conde wasn’t sure was worth the cost.

“[The city was] like, ‘We’re putting out to bid the Taj Mahal, and you guys are gonna have to pay us a bazillion dollars,’ and I’m like, ‘Honey, the entirety of the third floor smells bad,’” Conde says. “Every time I got out of the elevator on the third floor, I got a migraine because there was something really creepy underneath that carpet.”

Having first opened in 1915 to help host The Panama-Pacific International Exposition — a World’s Fair that ran from February to December that year — the San Francisco Exposition Auditorium (as it was first named) was not only a space for entertainment but a testament to the city’s recovery after the devastating earthquake of 1906. In the years following, the auditorium hosted Democratic conventions, the local opera, boxing matches, the circus and the NBA’s Golden State Warriors. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks spoke there about the success of the Montgomery, Ala. bus boycott shortly before the reverend’s assassination.

The city-owned space also welcomed artists including Elvis Presley, Judy Garland, BB King, Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald and Jose Feliciano throughout its tenure, but once the bigger George R. Moscone Convention Center opened in 1981 the auditorium began dwindling in popularity. Even with Bill Graham Presents booking the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Beastie Boys, Pearl Jam, Snoop Dogg and Lady Gaga, the 8,500-capacity venue spent most of its days dark.

“You can’t just leave an arena sitting fallow for two months and hope that everything turns on when you come back,” Conde says of the building. “There’s a living, breathing thing here that needs care and attention and love.”

Not only did APE want a stunning Beaux-Arts building in the middle of San Francisco — located across the street from city hall, next to Civic Center Plaza where the annual Pride festival is held and central to public transportation — but they also wanted to change the narrative around the venue named after their collective mentor. Graham pioneered concert promotion starting in the 1960s, putting on shows at the historic Fillmore in San Francisco, commissioning the iconic Fillmore posters and expanding to larger venues including stadium shows and festivals.

“[Graham] was able to set a table that people could enjoy, and he took that further and further and further,” says Conde, who began working for the legendary promoter in 1976. Her first event was the Day on the Green festival, which was headlined by Bay Area-based band Journey. “I didn’t necessarily want to work in the music industry or for a band. I wanted to work for [Graham] because of his energy and me as a patron watching him roll around and run this show.”

Through his Day on the Green outdoor stadium shows, Graham booked artists including The Who, Fleetwood Mac, The Beach Boys, Eagles, Led Zeppelin, Linda Ronstadt and The Grateful Dead.

“He was such a big personality. He ran this town. There was no coming to San Francisco or the Bay Area and not including him,” Conde recalls of a time before big national promoters like Live Nation and AEG, when independent promoters dominated specific regions.

In 1991, Graham died in a helicopter crash, with the city naming the auditorium after him a year later. Eventually, Bill Graham Presents became part of SFX as it began buying up regional promoters throughout the later ‘90s and early 2000s — and eventually, SFX sold its promotion arm to Clear Channel, which spun off to create Live Nation. “It was starting to feel like the industry is being homogenized,” says Conde, “and San Francisco, we’re not here for it.”

Perloff, Wasserman and Steve Welkom founded APE in 2003, retaining the independent spirit Graham held. They were joined by additional former Bill Graham Presents employees, including Conde, and started by taking over Berkeley, Calif.’s Greek Theatre next to the UC Berkeley campus in 2004. For several years, they went back and forth with the city of San Francisco to operate Bill Graham Civic, and they were finally awarded the venue in 2010. Taking over the auditorium required several million in improvements including replacing the elevators, upgrading the bathrooms, improving the fire safety system, changing out the floors, repainting and, of course, getting rid of the smell.

“We had the Department of Public Health here for six months, getting the hazardous materials out of here and cleaning the joint up,” Conde says. APE had to remove 55-gallon drums of an unknown substance from the building and fix concrete that was being eaten away from leaks. “The first year we were in this building, we were like, ‘Welcome to the Bill Graham Civic. It doesn’t smell bad today.’ That was a win for us.”

Since then, APE has continued making capital improvements — upgrading the rigging system to be able to hang 75,000 lbs. and renovating the AC during COVID lockdowns. In one of their most recent renovations, they installed retractable bleacher seats with padded cushions and cup holders for more intimate, theater-style performances for artists like Bonnie Raitt, David Byrne and Sara Bareilles.

“The hardest thing to do at Another Planet Entertainment is choose the right chair for your venue. We call every chair company,” says Conde. “There is no venue in our purview where the seats were just an afterthought.”

Fans can bring in empty water containers (even backpack bladders) to use the water fountains and refill stations. While selling bottled water brings monetary value to venues, Conde says the team never felt like it was the right thing to do. “It doesn’t encourage people to stay healthy and hydrated. And why not get rid of a million water bottles from going into landfill or the recycling bin?”

It’s an especially prudent safety measure, Conde says, since the auditorium has become a hot spot for EDM shows including sets from Kaskade, Illenium, Marshmello, Zedd, Kygo, Martin Garixx and Swedish House Mafia. EDM shows also benefit from the 700-sq-ft of open lounges that Conde calls “furniture vignettes” throughout the venue where fans tuck into these smaller spaces to grab some water, sit on comfortable couches or get a momentary break from a show.

Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Olivia Rodrigo, Chappell Roan, KATSEYE, The Strokes and more have all played the venue, and been treated to Bill Graham Auditorium’s gracious accommodations. Another Planet transformed what used to be the convention center’s breakout rooms to large dressing rooms, with an entire floor dedicated as an artist area. The hospitality helps APE work with artists throughout each step of their career, starting at the promotion company’s smallest club, Bimbo’s 365, to their flagship festival — Golden Gate Park’s Outside Lands. “The thing [Graham] taught me that I take with me is to treat people the way you want to be treated, whether they come in through the front door or the back door,” says Conde. It’s the little things like never yelling instructions at fans or, when the lights come up at the end of the show, they only go up to 50% instead of 100%. “Just because the show is over doesn’t mean I’m throwing up fluorescent lights and saying get out.”

Conde is aware many fans entering Bill Graham Civic’s doors may be attending their first concert. “You’re introducing someone to live music, and they’re going to come back for the next 50 years because they loved it so much and they had such a great time,” she says. “This is a core memory.”