Downtown: Theater move may be just the ticket for revitalizations.

Byline: The Register-Guard

It's become known as the "Barmuda Triangle."

Visit the intersection of West Broadway and Olive Street in Eugene in the late hours of a Friday or Saturday night, and you'll find bar-goers hitting The Horse head, Jameson's, John Henry's and Davis' Restaurant. You'll also find loitering youths in the area, and the occasional vandal and drug dealer.

That's what the Lord Leebrick Theatre Company is up against. Downtown enthusiasts hope Lord Leebrick will play the role of sparkplug, to help launch a revitalization of West Broadway by moving into space now occupied by the Tango Center on Broadway between Olive and Charnelton streets.

"We'd like to see as much positive action 24 hours a day as possible down there," Lord Leebrick artistic director Craig Willis said.

Downtown revitalization must start with theater, asserted longtime Lord Leebrick director Carol Horn Dennis. "The only thing that brings a downtown back to life is the theater."

But two years and four months after the Richard E. Wildish Community Theater opened on downtown Main Street in Springfield, bars, strip clubs and crime are still aplenty in the vicinity.

Lord Leebrick's move represents "a little ray of hope," said Mary Unruh, executive director of the Downtown Initiative for the Visual Arts, or DIVA, which is partnering with the theater company on the deal, and also makes its home on the southwest corner of Broadway and Olive.

When Randy Lord, who co-founded the theater company in 1992 and now makes his home in Boise, Idaho, as a teacher and storyteller, left Eugene in 2005, this stretch of Broadway was a "desolate ghost town," he wrote an in e-mail to The Register-Guard. "Can a move by (Lord Leebrick) change that? Of course not, and anyone who thinks so I would consider to be misguided. But it does have the potential to be one of the core's sorely needed anchors that may attract others to come in and hang a shingle."

That's the hope of Willis, the theater company's board, DIVA, city officials and others.

"The seed has been planted," Unruh said. "This is the type of project I think the city will get behind. And this will give a larger segment of the population a reason to come down here."

Lord Leebrick typically puts on seven shows a year, Willis said. He hopes to see two theaters built by Lord Leebrick at the West Broadway site and 10 to 12 shows a year there.

"Even in this economy, there's a huge desire for us to succeed," he said. "And we need to capitalize on that."

Let the fundraising begin.

Last fiscal year, the nonprofit theater cleared $16,259, which it added to a $50,956 balance left over from the previous year.

It will take a lot more than that to make its dream come true. Willis said he's counting on support from regional foundations such as the Oregon Community Foundation, the Meyer Memorial Trust and the MJ Murdock Charitable Trust of Vancouver, Wash.

- Mark Baker