On Wednesday, Alan Ziter will retire after spending 37 years as one of San Diego’s leading arts champions.
For the past 20 years he has run the NTC Foundation, which transformed the shuttered Naval Training Center in Point Loma into the thriving arts and commercial district known as Arts District Liberty Station. And for 17 years before that, he ran the San Diego Performing Arts League and built its popular Arts Tix half-price ticket booth. Along the way, Ziter has also volunteered many thousands of hours at the regional and state level as an advocate, promoter and fundraiser for San Diego County’s arts institutions.
Alan Ziter speaking to reporters in front of the San Diego Performing Arts League’s Arts Tix booth at Horton Plaza in 2003.
(Courtesy of Toni Robin)
Ziter turns 65 on June 18 and said he feels the time is right for him to step away from NTC, with most of the work he set out to do in 2004 either complete or in the final planning stages. He’s looking forward to having more free time to enjoy San Diego’s arts and cultural offerings as a private citizen, and he’s planning to travel more with friends and visit family on the East Coast.
But Ziter said he’s also retiring now because he feels a responsibility to make room for the next generation of arts leaders.
“There are so many young people who are up and coming in the arts administration sector. I think it’s important that there are good future job opportunities for them. I want them to stay in the arts and not have to leave because the leadership is stagnant,” Ziter said.
A crowd watches an outdoor performance at La Jolla Playhouse’s 2019 Without Walls Festival in the Arts District at Liberty Station.
(La Jolla Playhouse)
Toni Robin, a longtime public relations and branding expert for San Diego nonprofits and arts organizations, was hired by Ziter in 1996 to work at the San Diego Performing Arts League. They have been best friends ever since. She said no one has done more for San Diego’s arts over the past four decades than Ziter.
“Through all the years of working together on arts events, fund-raising, marketing, promotion, cultural tourism, advocacy and historic redevelopment, I have never met anyone that runs a better meeting, is more creative or more enthusiastically committed to San Diego’s arts and culture community,” Robin said. “His legacy of accomplishments working tirelessly to transform the former Naval Training Center into Arts District Liberty Station are matched only by the lifelong friends and colleagues he has developed along the way. It’s been an honor and a wild and fun ride.”
San Diego Performing Arts League Executive Director Alan Ziter, center, with employees Rick Prickett, left, and Toni Robin, right, at the League’s Arts Tix booth in 2002.
(Courtesy of Toni Robin)
Lisa Johnson, president and CEO of NTC Foundation, said she’s sorry to see Ziter go.
“It has been a great pleasure working with Alan through the years and I am so grateful for everything Alan has done to advance the arts at Liberty Station and in the greater San Diego community,” Johnson said. “I am confident he will continue to impact our community in positive ways, and I hope he enjoys his well-earned retirement.”
Bill Purves, who hired Ziter in 1986 to run the organization now known as the San Diego Performing Arts League, said the fact the League and Arts Tix are still going strong today “is a tribute to many people, but it’s in no small measure due to the foundation laid and fostered for almost 20 years by Alan.
“Alan believes strongly in community,” Purves said. “He believes strongly that we can accomplish far more by working together than by working alone, that success by one can foster the success of all, and I have watched this selfless ethos underpin all his efforts.”
And playwright Dea Hurston, who has worked in San Diego’s theater community for 32 years as an underwriter, arts commissioner, community engagement leader, gala planner and diversity advocate, credits Ziter with fueling her interest as an arts advocate.
“Alan Ziter is among a handful of administrative arts leaders who, during the’ 90s, began to elevate the trajectory of the San Diego arts community. My husband, Osborn, and I give Alan much credit for engaging us during that period,” Hurston said. “I feel fortunate to have graduated from the unofficial Alan Ziter School of Arts Leadership. He’s the most quietly persuasive person I’ve ever met and he has taught me so much about how to operate in the arts community. I consider him to be a friend and mentor. That’s the thing about Alan, he has not only he been a great leader, he’s always been that leader who mentors other leaders. We are so fortunate he chose San Diego to build his legacy.”
Behind the curtain
As a teenager, Ziter sang in school choirs, performed in school plays and dreamed of a career onstage. But when he enrolled at Northwestern University near Chicago to study theater and journalism, he realized he couldn’t compete with the talents of his fellow theater students. Instead, he started producing shows on campus and landed a marketing internship with the Shubert, a commercial theater in downtown Chicago.
When Ziter graduated from Northwestern, the Shubert hired him as the theater’s house manager, overseeing productions of “The Last Whorehouse in Texas” and “Evita.” From there, he was hired to manage the League of Chicago Theatres’ discount ticket booth, Hot Tix. In January 1986, Ziter and Purves met at a North American arts league convention and Purves asked Ziter to consider moving to San Diego to build and run a similar discount ticket booth.
“Bill brought me out in January from Chicago where it was 5 degrees, and it was a Santa Ana weekend here,” Ziter recalled of the offer he couldn’t refuse.
On March 31, 1986, Ziter started his new job as the first paid employee of the San Diego Theater League (later renamed the San Diego Performing Arts League). His responsibilities involved filling empty seats, increasing community visibility and media coverage and boosting state and regional funding for the league’s initial 35 member institutions. After a three-year effort to secure funding and a location, Ziter opened the Arts Tix booth at Horton Plaza shopping center in 1989, offering member organizations’ unsold tickets for half price. The booth was a smash hit from the start.
“But the success of Arts Tix wasn’t just about selling tickets,” Ziter said. “It helped demystify the theater-going experience. People have questions on how to get there, where to park, what to wear. Nobody wants to feel out of place when they go. It was as much an information booth as it was about selling tickets.”
The ArtsTix booth at San Diego’s Horton Plaza.
(Eder Escamilla)
Arts advocacy
The same year the Arts Tix booth opened, the city of San Diego floated a proposal to eliminate arts funding from its general budget. All of the city’s arts organizations spoke out against the plan and the arts funding was restored. From that success came the San Diego Regional Arts & Culture Coalition, which Ziter co-founded with the goal of raising money for the city’s arts commission. Ziter also served for seven years on the board of the San Diego Tourism Authority and three years on the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce board, where he chaired the Arts & Business Committee.
In the late 1980s, the AIDS epidemic was devastating the San Diego theater and dance communities. In response, Ziter launched Creative Response for the Arts, a nonprofit that hosted fund-raising theater and concert performances for people battling AIDS. In 1998, the Performing Arts League launched Bravo San Diego, an annual fund-raising gala at the Westgate Hotel that featured 60 performing arts organizations in 30 spaces throughout the hotel. The Bravo San Diego galas continued annually through 2002.
Victoria Hamilton spent more than 35 years in leadership roles with state and national arts organizations, including 24 years as the founding executive director of the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture. She has high praise for Ziter.
“For over 30 years, Alan has been a dedicated and tireless advocate for increased funding and support of San Diego’s arts and culture community,” Hamilton said. “Through his political acumen and ability to rally arts organizations, artists and funders, he helped secure unanimous San Diego Mayor and City Council support for the Commission for Arts and Culture’s Penny for the Arts initiative. His long-term leadership and collaborative spirit will continue to be appreciated.”
Alan Ziter at the Naval Training Center’s command center, now in the heart of the Arts District at Liberty Station.
(NTC Foundation)
Liberty Station reborn
In 1997, the U.S. Navy closed the Naval Training Center base and offered to set aside 26 vacant barracks and other buildings for future use as an arts and culture district. To raise the estimated $26 million needed to renovate the buildings for Arts District Liberty Station, the NTC Foundation was formed and Ziter was recruited in January 2004 to run the organization.
Ziter said the former Navy buildings were in a surprising state of disrepair when he arrived, and he quickly realized the estimated renovation costs were nowhere close to what would be needed for the job. Raising money also proved difficult because most San Diego philanthropists had never stepped foot on the fenced NTC base. To get the ball rolling, he organized donor bus tours of the property. Gradually Ziter and his foundation colleagues raised the initial money needed through public donations, city redevelopment funds, market tax and historic tax credits and work began.
Malashock dancers Natalia Hill, Justin Viernes, Caroline Dahm and Tristian Griffin perform at Liberty Station in 2021.
(Courtesy photo by Jim Carmody / Malashock Dance)
In 2006, the first six buildings in Arts District Liberty Station opened, providing permanent homes to Malashock Dance, San Diego Ballet, San Diego Dance Theater and several visual art galleries and museums.
Over the years, more than 100 tenants have moved into Arts District Liberty Station and the overall cost of renovating the buildings has grown to $135 million.
The last major arts district project will break ground later this year. The $39 million Joan and Irwin Jacobs Performing Arts Center will open in 2025 and will be the future home of San Diego’s third-largest theater company, Cygnet Theatre. It will also provide year-round performance spaces for Liberty Station’s dance companies.
Just eight of the original 26 Navy buildings remain to be renovated, including two barracks buildings, five officer homes and a gate house. Ziter estimates those will all be completed and occupied in five years.
A rendering shows the main 289-seat theater for Cygnet Theatre’s planned new home at the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Performing Arts Center at Liberty Station.
(Meri + Gold)
Judy Nora, NTC Foundation’s board chair, said Arts District Liberty Station could not have happened without Ziter’s hard work.
“We have been so fortunate to have such a passionate arts leader like Alan on our team for more than 20 years,” Nora said. “During Alan’s tenure, the NTC Foundation has evolved tremendously, and his legacy will remain through many of the programs he helped to develop. I hope that in the coming years Alan continues to visit Arts District Liberty Station to see firsthand how far his contributions have gone.”
Today, Liberty Station has become widely recognized of one of San Diego’s most beloved cultural jewels. It has also been nationally recognized as a model for how to redevelop surplus government properties into much-needed space for financially strapped arts and cultural organizations.
Ziter said he’s proud of how Arts District Liberty Station has come together.
“Every time I go over there I enjoy seeing how the public embraces the destination,” Ziter said. “They love wandering through the historic buildings. During the pandemic it was the community’s backyard. It really is authentic to San Diego, just like Universal City CityWalk is to Los Angeles.”
Liberty Public Market at Liberty Station in Point Loma is expanding by 6,000 square feet in multiple phases.
(Zack Benson)