By Patrick Hoge | Examiner staff writer
May 20, 2025 Updated 16 hrs ago
From left, Peggy Haas is chair of the Presidio Theatre’s board of directors and one of its benefactors, and Lilly Schwartz serves as its executive director.
Peggy Haas was looking for a home for her beloved Children’s Theatre Association of San Francisco when she happened upon the Presidio Theatre, a long-dormant playhouse on the former military base, where she recalled attending a show with her father as a high school student.
“A friend of mine and I had just been looking at the Disney Family Museum, and we were walking up the street, and I said, ‘Oh, my Lord, this building has been empty forever,’ said Haas, 70, the daughter of former Levi Strauss Chairman Peter Strauss. “I thought, this has potential.”
Haas, a theater performer herself since the age of 8 who is now chair of the Presidio Theatre’s board of directors, was a longtime member of the children’s theater group, which had lost its prior space at the Legion of Honor.
Convening a team of architects, builders and experts in theater mechanics, Haas proceeded to spend $44 million that her father left in a charitable account on renovating and expanding the historic but forlorn Presidio Theatre, where once stars Bob Hope, Marlene Dietrich, Jack Benny and Loretta Young entertained troops.
After the sumptuous renovation was completed in 2019, the theater had about five months to stretch its wings before the COVID-19 pandemic put an end to performances, causing the stage to go dark for two more years. Since then, the operation has been working to regain momentum.
Now, with new executive and artistic director Lilly Schwartz at the helm, the Presidio Theatre has planned a season that is a coming-out party of sorts. About 90 performances are scheduled from September to May featuring artists from around the world, including numerous big-name talents, and a promotional blitz will put radio and print ads, bus signs and pole banners around The City. There will also be shows over the summer.
“We want to get people to the theater,” Haas said. “Right now, it's really important to get people there and see what a wonderful venue it is.”
Luxuriously revamped Presidio Theatre offers big-name talent
Greg