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SOON AFTER Kensington made public its development plan, Jerome and other theater connoisseurs formed the ad hoc group that would become the Gaiety Friends. In an attempt to prevent the theater’s destruction, the group petitioned the BLC (a nine-member body appointed by the mayor) in November 2002 to designate the Gaiety a landmark — a property, according to BLC regulations, "with historic, social, cultural, architectural or aesthetic significance." But they quickly discovered how resistant city officials were to the idea. When Jerome and Eiseman filed the petition at the BLC, Ellen Lipsey, its executive director, expressed disapproval. As Jerome recalls, Lipsey "said to me, ‘Steve, why are you trying to kill this [Kensington Place] project?’" Jerome found the comment "interesting," since it suggested that the BLC would rather rubber-stamp the plan than do its duty to preserve historic buildings. Eiseman, who confirms the exchange, was so discouraged by the comment that he assumed the Gaiety Friends’ petition would amount to "a waste of time."

But the group got down to business anyway: members dug into library archives; they researched famous people associated with the Gaiety; they compiled a 122-page study laying out an argument for saving the theater. After a six-month campaign by the Gaiety defenders, however, the BLC recommended against designating the theater a landmark. On April 22, 2003, the commissioners announced their recommendation at a public meeting, where they declined even to call for a vote. Instead, according to an April 29, 2003, memo on the meeting, the BLC concluded that the building "does not meet the rigorous standards for Landmark designation," although it acknowledged "the Gaiety Theatre is worth preserving in and of itself," whatever that means.

The BLC decision removed a daunting hurdle before Kensington Place. Despite this devastating blow, the Gaiety Friends have carried on. They have sent up to 80 letters of support for preserving the Gaiety Theatre to the Menino administration, including missives from such noteworthy people as Julie Harris, the "first lady" of American vaudeville theater; Henry Louis Gates Jr., the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University; and Bill Irwin, a New York artist known for his work as the "new vaudevillian." They have reached out to local performing-arts organizations — from the New England Light Opera to the Boston Bel Canto Opera, from the Boston Chamber Music Society to the Bostonians — to find artists who would like to use a rehabilitated Gaiety. They have posted SAVE THE GAIETY fliers on the theater’s decaying façade. Last May, they even crashed Mayor Menino’s kick-off party for an initiative meant to revive downtown’s Theater District. As the mayor stood on the corner of Tremont and Stuart Streets and lauded his Theater District Improvement Plan, the Gaiety Friends protested with posters that said WHERE IS OUR PRESERVATION MAYOR? and PRESERVE THE GAIETY.

To Gaiety defenders, preserving the theater is entirely consistent with the city’s own policies. In fact, in 1989, after four years of intense planning, a city-sponsored task force — comprising dozens of artists; preservationists; Chinatown residents; property owners, including Stuart Pratt, then a partner in Kensington Investment; and city officials, including Mayor Menino, then a district city councilor — devised the Midtown Cultural District Plan, a comprehensive vision for the area surrounding the Gaiety. The plan aimed to direct downtown development and protect Chinatown by "creating affordable housing." At the same time, it set a premium on revitalizing the district as a cultural mecca, "the region’s center for performing and visual arts." It called for "rehabilitating historic theaters and creating new cultural facilities for the city’s nonprofit arts community." And the plan specifically identified the Gaiety as a "vacant theater — worthy of preservation."

Lydia Lowe, executive director of the Chinese Progressive Association (CPA), a Chinatown advocacy group that is a plaintiff in one of the Kensington Place lawsuits, explains that the Midtown Cultural District Plan calls for a "mutually supportive relationship between Chinatown and the theater district." To this end, it recommends re-using the Gaiety as "a new Asian performing arts center" for the benefit of Chinatown residents. Currently, none of the neighborhood’s cultural troupes can afford to perform in their own back yard. Instead, they rent space at the John Hancock Building, the MIT Kresge Auditorium, or nearby school gyms. "People tell me they want a big theater for Chinese opera and other types of performances," Lowe says. She finds it "ironic" that Kensington Place contrasts so starkly with the stated goals of the Midtown Cultural District Plan. "What is proposed," she points out, "is destruction of a historic theater, no replacement Asian cultural facility, and high-income housing."

Of course, a renovated Gaiety would benefit more than just Chinatown residents. The gateway block on which the theater sits connects the Theater District’s east wing, which runs along upper Washington Street (the site of the recently restored Opera House and the Paramount and Modern theaters), with its west wing, near Tremont and Boylston Streets (home of the Colonial, Wilbur, Wang, and Emerson Majestic theaters). Currently, no theatrical structures link the two portions together. Defenders argue that a restored Gaiety could fill in this gap and make for a more complete district.

Concludes David Colfer, the theater-operations director at Brandeis University, who backs the Gaiety Friends, "This project is consistent with so many city policies. It fits the commitment to culture and history. It fits the area’s renaissance. It just makes sense."