Granada Theater Owners Sell the Dallas Music Hall to Bathhouse; Shows Run Through April 2027

The Granada Theater opened on Lower Greenville Avenue in Dallas on January 16, 1946, with “Mildred Pierce.” Mike Schoder and Julia Garton have run it as a music venue since 2004. On October 23 they announced they are selling it, along with Sundown at Granada, their restaurant next door, to Bathhouse, the New York social bathing company. Shows continue through April 17, 2027. Bathhouse plans to open on the site in 2028.

“The live music industry has changed dramatically,” the owners wrote in their statement, citing “rising costs, shifting audiences, and corporate consolidation.” Schoder was in the record business with CD World before the Granada, and the statement draws on that: “Having lived through the record industry transformation with CD World, I’ve learned to recognize when it’s time.” The owners also wrote that they turned down developers who wanted to build hundreds of apartments and “searched for a way to keep the music playing.” In the end, they wrote, “we found a future for this corner of Greenville Avenue with a concept called Bathhouse,” CultureMap Dallas reported.

The marquee stays and the inside gets redesigned

Talmadge told The Dallas Morning News that the theater’s exterior will stay the same, NBC DFW reported. CandysDirt reports that the facade, the marquee and most of the exterior will be preserved, the interior will be completely redesigned, and the Sundown building will come down so the theater building can expand.

The main hall has murals by artists who also worked on Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, according to the Granada’s history page, including a “film goddess” on the ceiling standing over a reel of film. None of the announcements say what happens to them.

Dallas saved the Granada once before

The theater closed on Halloween night in 1986 after a showing of “The Tingler.” Neighbors put up “Save the Granada” signs and gathered a 2,000-signature petition, and new operators reopened it the next year as the Granada Cinema ’n’ Drafthouse. It went through several more operators before live music came back for good in the 2000s.

A new Change.org petition went up on October 23 and had more than 1,000 signatures by the next evening, CandysDirt reported. It asks for a nonprofit to preserve the venue, backed by corporate sponsors, fundraising, and government and historic preservation grants.

Independent venues are short on margin

A National Independent Venue Association study found that 64% of independent venues, promoters and festivals are not profitable. The association’s Stephen Parker pointed to rising rents and to audiences who go out less often and drink less than before COVID. “Alcohol sales are how you make money,” he told NPR in December 2025.

Not every sale ends the music. On the same day as the Granada news, former staff of the Somerville Theatre near Boston said they had bought it for $12 million, keeping its cinema and its Crystal Ballroom music room open, the Boston Globe reported.

Bathhouse’s second music landmark

The Granada isn’t the first music building in Bathhouse’s plans. In March, LA Magazine reported that the company is taking the former Amoeba Music building on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood for a flagship projected to open in early 2028. Talmadge told the magazine that bathing with other people compares to “a great concert versus listening to music on your own.”

Bathhouse runs three locations in New York and one in Philadelphia, with Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, and Chicago expected next, CultureMap reported. Dallas would be its first location in Texas. In the US, the bathhouse is the business that’s opening, as a SaunaNews count of state business registers found last week, and operators have spent the past year pitching the sauna as a night out.

For operators: a theater is a big shell with old bones

A theater offers what’s scarce in a city neighborhood: one large hall, a stage house and a street-facing front that people already know. It also brings the work that comes with putting heat, water and humidity into an existing building, where about a third of the floor typically goes to mechanical and back-of-house space. Bathhouse hasn’t released plans, capacity or prices for Dallas.

Until April, the Granada keeps booking. Ray Wylie Hubbard plays on October 30 and The Linda Lindas on October 31, and the full calendar is on the Granada’s site.

Disclosure: Bathhouse is listed on SaunaShare, which owns SaunaNews.