Is Vault 350 owner Rudy Medina downtown’s next patron saint?

PHOTO by JOHN GILHOOLEY

Rudy Medina sounds like the kind of guy who knows a good thing when he sees it, and at the moment that happens to be his own reflection, which he can barely see at all. Medina is checking himself out—or trying to—in the steel door of an old bank safe that’s been buried a couple flights of stairs below Pine Avenue for nearly 90 years. Long ago that door might have been shiny as a mirror, but these days it’s clouded by a patina of rust. Medina likes what he’s looking at, anyway. He believes it’s good luck.

“Me finding this place, in Long Beach, at this time—it’s lucky,” asserts Medina, president of San Diego-based Medina Investments and Development, in a voice that tumbles out of his mouth like off-loading gravel. “It’s the way great things come out of the worst of times.”

By “worst of times” Medina means the long-languishing fortunes of downtown Long Beach, which have been made more unfortunate by the current economic recession, as well as the loss of one of the better things it had going for it—the Vault 350 concert venue—when owner Mitchell Stewart suddenly died of a heart attack in April 2008. By “great things” Medina means his plans to deftly reshuffle all this calamity into a civic renaissance—and, oh yeah, a personal profit. And by “lucky” he means the circumstances of his own arrival, not only falling into the right place at the right time but also right into the lap of Long Beach officials who had been looking for just such a break—but never saw this one coming.

As if to pantomime the pivotal point he’s talking about, Medina turns away from the crusty old safe, leans into the glowing light that photographer John Gilhooley has created in the dusty basement of this 1920s-era bank building, puffs some revived life into the last third of a long cigar and swoops his eyes into the camera. Click-click-click.

“Uhhhh . . . no,” Gilhooley says decisively, shaking his head after a quick review of the first round of shots on his camera’s digital screen. “Loosen your grip on the chair, Rudy. Bring your left foot forward. Lower your chin. We’ll try again.”

So maybe Medina, the confident face of the latest can’t-miss chance to awaken downtown Long Beach, isn’t ready for his closeup after all. Well, not yet, at least: the interior of the former Bank of America at 350 Pine Avenue—hence the name—remains in appearance much closer to an archeological excavation than the state-of-the-arts-and-entertainment center that Medina is promising for the new-and-improved Vault. But he doesn’t seem concerned.

“Things are going as planned,” he says with calm certainty, although he’s not at all offended that anybody might wonder otherwise. “We’re trying to open in the first quarter of 2010 with some soft events, then a grand opening by the end of February.”

That’s only five, maybe six, months away.

“Basically, what we’re doing is a complete renovation,” Medina responds, as though that doesn’t intensify the deadline pressure. “We’ve scraped things to the walls and climbed to the ceiling.”

Then he says more.

“We’re implementing live music again, but the level of touring acts and Southern California artists will be much higher than before, like Smokey Robinson, the Doobie Brothers—legends of soul and rock ‘n’ roll . . . plus, like, Ashley Tisdale. We’re speaking to people from Vegas. We’ve secured a grand opening name that’s world class. I can’t speak on that, yet, but expect a big, big, big, big splash.”

And more.

“We’re upgrading the food service, bringing in David T. Abella of Roy’s in Poipu, Hawaii. But this will be more than a popular music and dinner club.”

And still more.

“We’ve met with the Long Beach Opera; we’re looking into off-Broadway shows, convention meetings, corporate events, big weddings; we’ve been in touch with the Long Beach Grand Prix; we’re planning to run some TED conference people through here for a look-see, then book them for the following year; we’re planning meetings with Disney. . . .”

Medina pauses to let this all soak in—and he’s got to keep that cigar from going out.

“We’re pretty ambitious in our planning,” he summarizes, a mischievous understatement, sucking on the stogie to keep from grinning. He lets another cloud go, which billows around his head in a way that for a second or two looks kind of like one of those holy auras in Biblical paintings.

Long Beach officials have been searching for precisely this kind of savior—somebody to bankroll a big-time retail or entertainment magnet that would bring foot traffic a few blocks farther north on Pine Avenue and extend a downtown renaissance that has struggled to break out of a huddle around Broadway.

Of course, they thought they’d found that person in 2004, when Mitchell Stewart first converted the abandoned Bank of America into a nightclub that the Los Angeles Times immediately christened “the best new music venue in Southern California.” During the next four years, artists as diverse as B.B. King, the Killers, Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds, the Game, Pennywise and Kanye West played the Vault 350; and Stewart made plans to open an adjacent jazz-and-blues supper club called Backstage.

But some still-unclear problems in Stewart’s organization began to slow the parade of big stars to the Vault, and squabbles with residential neighbors delayed the opening of Backstage. Then, suddenly, Stewart passed away—apparently from a heart attack—on April 27, 2008. He was only 49. For Long Beach, Stewart’s death was even worse than the too-early loss of a human life.

“It killed the street, quite frankly,” says Craig Beck, who heads both the city’s Development Services department and Redevelopment Agency. “We didn’t only lose Mr. Stewart, we didn’t only lose the Vault and Backstage—it basically stopped all the revitalizing momentum we had up there.”

Rumors of the Vault’s reopening began almost the day it closed. Former city-council candidate Bill Grisolia said he had a plan. Press-Telegram columnist Tim Grobaty reported a scenario—financed by a big Hollywood producer and managed by the Blue Café’s founding visionary, Vince Jordan—that would have had the club switching on its soundboard as early as last April’s Grand Prix weekend.

“We talked to a number of retail brokers,” says Beck, “and a couple of people were really interested.”

None of them were Rudy Medina.

“Nobody from the city reached out to me—nobody had to,” he says. “I knew all about the Vault and its great reputation. I knew that Mitchell Stewart had passed away. I knew about Long Beach: I used to come here when I was a little kid on my father’s commercial fishing boat to deliver his catch to the canneries.”

Medina also knew what had been accomplished in the Gaslamp District in his native San Diego, where a seaside downtown was roused from its doldrums and returned to a thriving component of the local economy—a place for locals, tourists and conventioneers alike—and the city’s soul.

“The bones of downtown Long Beach remind me of the Gaslamp District, which also has a convention center and hotels on the water and this traditional urban core just a few blocks away. For guys like me, that’s where I see opportunity. I found it all by myself, and I went to the city.”

And after encouraging meetings with crucial components of the Long Beach power structure—from Beck the development czar to Convention and Visitors Bureau Chief Steve Goodling to Downtown Long Beach Associates President Kraig Kojian to Commander Jeffry Johnson of the Long Beach Police Department—Medina went to the International City Bank, which had foreclosed on the Vault.

Why buy a massive entertainment venue in the middle of a distressed downtown in the middle of a deep recession?

“I’m an entrepreneur, and we live in America,” says Medina. “These are normal cycles. Besides, even when things are tough people will spend money on entertainment. And Long Beach is a great location—both isolated and competitive. On one hand it’s not like Sunset Blvd., where people can spend money every three feet with a different club or restaurant. On the other, we have great local demographics and density and a 12-million-person surrounding market.”

Bottom line: Medina says he walked into International City Bank to buy the Vault and walked out with a very good deal.

“I never would have bought the place for $10 million, which is what was originally being asked,” Medina says. “But when the Vault went back to the bank, I bought it for one-third of that.”

Actually, the buyers consisted of a group of investors that Medina assembled, as well as his 50-50 principal partner Luis Armen Kaloyan, a longtime radio-station owner and executive. But Medina insists that he and Kaloyan will be calling the operational shots at the Vault, and that their self-sufficiency will be central to its identity.

“In preparing this old building, I want to explore its soul—the architect was the same guy who did the Farmers & Merchants Bank—and install a kick-ass sound system to create a truly iconic, world-famous space,” says Medina.

The Vault’s renown may get a kick in the digital pants from Kaloyan, who intends to use the venue as a source of live musical content for his online station, X1FM (x1fm.com).

“I want to stay independent because every aspect of our entertainment has become so corporate,” says Medina. “Not that corporations are so bad in themselves. For me, what’s important isn’t private ownership, it’s pride of ownership.”

And the upshot of all that independence and pride is that the bottom line for Long Beach taxpayers has been . . . zero?

“Nothing,” says Beck, “has been expended to date.”

Of course, on Monday, Sept. 21, things could be different. That’s when the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency meets next. The official agenda hadn’t been released by press time, but the tentative plan calls for Rudy Medina to appear before the board to ask for money—$250,000.

“I’ve applied for a marquee grant,” Medina confirms. “There’s nothing we can do to restore the outside of the building; it was destroyed when they covered the place with those huge granite slabs. But we think we can reconfigure it into a real, Broadway-theater marquee—bring this surreal, almost pulsating Gotham City look.”

Medina says the $250,000 grant wouldn’t be even half of what the marquee would cost: with the exterior box office and presentation cases of upcoming events, he estimates the total cost at $600,000.

But that quarter-million may not be all Medina eventually gets from the RDA.

“We are considering some financial packages,” Beck acknowledges. “The first one is for façade improvements; we are working with Mr. Medina to improve the exteriors, save the mosaic, reactivate the north side of the building, open some windows and add a marquee. We are also considering a potential business loan.”

So is this the part of the story that anybody who knows anything about Long Beach’s experience with self-anointed—but ultimately self-serving—civic saviors had to know was coming?

Maybe not—and not only because providing assistance to the Vault falls within the RDA’s mission to eliminate blight, create jobs and generate tax revenue.

It’s also because of Medina’s reaction when he is clued into the skepticism with which so many oft-burned residents are bound to greet his grand plan and pronouncements—especially with all that smoke he blows.

“Wow,” says Medina, drawing out the word into an expression of sympathy. “It’s like, ‘Always close, but no cigar.’”

Yeah, kinda.

Medina falls silent for a moment, searching for something that might attest to the sincerity of his intentions. He comes up with something pretty quickly.

“We’re already pregnant!” says Medina, sweeping his arm across the construction site, which does bear a fetal resemblance to the fully formed plans that are spread out on tables. “We’re doing it! We’re going to open this place and make it a success. With or without the city’s help, we’re doing it!”

Maybe that answer is a little too quick? Surrendering leverage a week before asking for money certainly doesn’t seem like the wisest business strategy.

On the other hand, it’s seems like a good reflection on him. This time, maybe Long Beach really is the lucky one.

Tags: Craig Beck, Long Beach, Mitchell Stewart, Music, pine ave, rda, rudy medina, vault 350