The Arts District probably didn’t need a multiplex. The seven-screen Eclipse/Art Houz/Downtown Cinemas complex, located at 814 S. 3rd Street, has long struggled to project confidence in the shadow of the Beverly Theater and Palace Station’s Cinebarre. Now, a group of local cultural entities—including Vegas Theatre Company, Vegas City Opera, Laugh After Dark, Las Vegas Sinfonietta and marquee magician Teller—are converting the underperforming multiplex into a theatrical incubator, named for the street where it lives.
“THIRD Street is the answer to a question Las Vegas has been asking for decades,” said Vegas City Opera executive director Ginger Land-van Buuren in a statement. “Where do we go to tell our stories, train our talent, and create something truly our own? This is where Vegas-made creativity takes center stage.”
Most of the hard work in creating this instant theater district is already done, but there’s still some $5 million worth of renovations needed before the complex can welcome its first productions in spring 2026, says Daz Weller, Vegas Theatre Company’s executive artistic director. Weller spoke about THIRD Street’s scope and ambitions while sitting in the theater’s restaurant space, which he hopes will become an all-day café.
“Our patrons are going to include creative people arriving at eight in the morning and possibly students and parents of students arriving throughout the day, [people arriving] for matinee performances and preshow dinners,” Weller says. “Part of the idea behind this place is, when we get the design right, it becomes not just a hub for these resident companies, but it can accommodate other companies and share resources. It becomes a sort of WeWork for the arts.”
I’m excited for the idea of a theater incubator. So many Strip performers have told me they get frustrated with the loops they’re in.
Yeah. There are so many creative people here, and whether they’re engaged full-time with their golden handcuffs on shows on the Strip, or whether they’re new residents here who are moving because of the cost of living, Vegas is a great place to be right now. There are so many people who want to make stuff and tell stories and make art, and we lack the spaces and the infrastructure and the institutions to make that happen. And Michael Park, the real estate agent who’s sort of representing this building, would often drive by the theater, and he was like, “Hey, Daz, get in the car. I want to show you something.”
And so, we walked through, got excited. We set up a meeting with the owners of the building, who were out from New York, and pitched them the idea of turning it into a performing arts center of sorts. They were interested, and the conversations have kept moving forward.
What’s the plan?
The plan is ambitious, but it’s phased. The first phase is a low-impact conversion of the building. We change cinema 2 into a 250-seat, proscenium style theater. We change cinema 6, which is one of the small ones, into a 150-seat black box theater. We leave two screening rooms available for use as screening rooms, soundstages, sound recording studios or post-mix facilities. And we turn the third-floor event space into a sort of Broadway-ready rehearsal space that also still functions as a beautiful event space.
I didn’t even realize this building had a third floor.
It’s the best part of the building. Windows on two sides; you look over Downtown and the mountains. It’s gorgeous.
Elephant in the room: Let’s talk fundraising.
We’re looking to raise $5 million. $3 million or so of that goes toward the build-out, and then $2 million goes toward programming and overheads and staffing for the first two years.
[Vegas Theatre Company is] a half-million-dollar company, and to look at spending $3 million on capital build out is large. But compared to other projects in town that are looking for 10 times that, this is a low-risk way to test the idea of, does Vegas even want this? That’s the question we need to answer through fundraising. … We know that there’s potential here. The Smith Center proves there’s an audience for this kind of work. We only need a fraction of that audience to make this size space successful.
Where do I send the check?
Our first big fundraising event is here in the space on August 15. Richard Oberacker and Robert Taylor are working on Bruce, their musical about Jaws, and they offered a reading of it as a fundraiser. It’s a great showcase for what we want to do here at THIRD Street, which is incubating new work. It’s about building the audience.
Rather than looking for one or two or five sources to fund us, it’s about getting a much wider reach, because that becomes our audience—the people who turn up who’ve said yes. $5 million is 100 donations of $50,000 which, when you break it down like that, seems achievable.
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