This historic Phoenix music venue got a major makeover at 60. See what changed

The Celebrity Theatre is celebrating 60 years of entertaining Phoenix in a freshly renovated building, including a completely reimagined downstairs lounge that now features breathtaking paintings of Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Nicks and David Bowie.

The Encore Lounge at the Celebrity Theatre. Celebrity Theatre celebrates the 60th anniversary of the venue during a press conference at Celebrity Theatre on Feb. 16, 2024, in Phoenix.

They all performed on the Celebrity’s rotating stage as they were taking their first steps on the road to the iconic status they now occupy.

There’s also a display case honoring another local legend, Alice Cooper, who holds his annual Christmas Pudding concert there.

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Jill Jacenko joined the team at the Celebrity in 2022 as director of marketing. And she’s been doing more than marketing since then.

“Over the last 12 months, we have sweated through days with no air conditioning and nearly froze during days where there was no heat on,” she says.

“We have painted walls. We have hung curtains. And we literally searched the globe for the perfect tile. Our team has put endless hours into making this place beautiful again.”

The Celebrity Theatre opened in 1964 as the Star Theatre

When the historic music venue opened, it was known as the Star Theatre. Its first performance – a production of “South Pacific” with Betsy Palmer – was on Jan. 13, 1964.

The building was originally designed in 1963 as a multipurpose conference center that could be transformed into a concert venue during winter months.

It was Liberace who suggested a revolving stage, which started spinning at a truly revolutionary Liberace gig on Jan. 10, 1969, to complement the building’s circular design.

Among the many legends that have graced the stage of the 2,650-capacity theater in the round are Billy Joel, Van Halen, Whitney Houston, Etta James, the Weeknd, Jeff Beck, Duran Duran, Diana Ross, the Grateful Dead, the Beastie Boys, Beyonce, Smashing Pumpkins, Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, B.B. King, Kendrick Lamar and Olivia Newton-John.

It also has hosted great comedians, from Chris Rock to George Carlin, who filmed his 1978 HBO standup special “George Carlin: Again!” at the Celebrity.

In 2019, the Celebrity was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

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Heidi Hazelwood hope to keep her late father’s vision alive

In 2021, Heidi Hazelwood acquired the theater after the passing of her father Rich Hazelwood, who purchased the Celebrity in 1998.

“My dad’s vision when he bought the theater was to enjoy concerts, enjoy artists that he grew up seeing and just have fun, inviting friends and family, developing kind of a family atmosphere here at Celebrity Theatre, not only with our employees but also with our patrons,” she says.

“He loved that.”

Rich Hazelwood died on March 1, 2021, while the theater was closed during the pandemic.

Since assuming control of the theater, Heidi Hazelwood has assembled a team that’s allowed her to lead the Celebrity to new heights, including record sales and more events while undergoing major renovations, from critical repairs to a remodel that restored the midcentury modern vibe to make you feel like you’re back in the ‘60s.

“Everybody just put their worker boots on and got in here with blood, sweat and tears,” she says. “My whole team has literally worked their butts off. And this is the product of that.”

‘Is this a relaunch? Sure. Is it a rebrand? Absolutely’

David Cruse, the venue’s managing director, who began as a consultant during the pandemic, says, “Is this a relaunch? Sure. Is it a rebrand? Absolutely. But I think we’d like to say this is more of a re-vibe.”

Cruse says he knew there was work to be done when he joined the team.

“Looking around the venue, there were issues,” he recalls. “I was told horror stories, including by Rich, when we went out for breakfast several times before he passed away.

“And on our first show, I don’t even remember what show it was, every nightmare that I had heard happened that night. The chain fell off the stage. The stage stopped spinning. The boiler room was flooded. Everything that could go wrong went wrong.”

In 2022 as the pandemic wanted, the Celebrity Theatre hosted more events than anyone expected.

“And we were fixing things and tacking things together and holding things together with gum,” Cruse recalls. “We replaced the stage mechanism that spins it to reduce the fail points and things like that.”

Among the highlights of that year were Nate Bargatze filming four sold-out performances for his Prime Video comedy special “Hello World” and Tom Segura filming four sold-out performances for “Tom Segura: Sledgehammer,” a Netflix special that premiered in 2023.

“During Tom’s filming, we had some issues in terms of plumbing, toilets, things like that,” Cruse says. “Nobody knew as far as Netflix went. It didn’t affect the shooting and we handled it.”

How ‘the odyssey’ of 2023 led to a full-scale renovation

That led to what Cruse calls “the odyssey” of 2023.

“It’s very difficult to run and book a venue,” Cruse says, “when you look at it and you say, ‘We’re gonna have to shut down to do a lot of work.’”

What the Celebrity managed to do was to continue programming while allowing windows of time to work on addressing those issues.

“And man, it was expensive, but we replaced essentially the entire plumbing system in the building,” Cruse says. “And we knew that we had to redo the bathrooms after that.”

It was Cruse’s idea to add to those expenses with a major renovation.

As he recalls his pitch to Hazelwood, “I looked at her and said, ‘Do you want to just do this? We’re spending all this money. Why don’t we spend a little bit more and just renovate as we go?’ So we did that.”

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What to expect at the Celebrity Theatre’s new Encore Lounge

The vast majority of those renovations took place in the downstairs bar, which was originally called the Encore Lounge. Drywall was torn out to reveal columns that match the exterior columns that surround the venue.

“We ripped out every piece of sheet rock on this level,” Cruse recalls. “And that was what sort of began this redesign of going, ‘This is cool. This is so much cooler than a display case on the wall. It’s so much cooler to have an architectural feature in the room.’”

That left the question of how to reflect the history of the Celebrity that had been covering that drywall.

“We had taken down all the memorabilia, which was just kind of up on the walls, TGI Fridays-esque,” Cruse says.

Hence the stunning portraits of Springsteen, Nicks and Bowie, and the display case devoted to Cooper.

“Over the years, this became known as the Celebrity Club,” Cruse says of the downstairs lounge. “And we have decided now to go back to that original name. So this newly renovated space is known once again as the Encore Lounge.”

The Encore Lounge includes a stage on which the Celebrity plans to bring in smaller acts and artists on the rise.

“We’re not booked seven days a week,” Cruse says. “So if we hit a point where we’re six to eight weeks out from a show, why not put one down here. We know we’re not gonna put one upstairs at that point.

“So why not give up-and-comers or established people that just play smaller rooms a place to come and perform and make use of this beautiful space.”

Reach the reporter at [email protected] or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: This historic Phoenix music venue got a major makeover at 60. See what changed