The SoMa drag venue at 298 11th Street will reopen on July 17 after the nonprofit Oasis Arts purchased the building outright for $3.5 million, converting the operation from a for-profit club to a nonprofit arts institution with new executive leadership.

The drag venue at 298 11th Street in SoMa was days from shutting for good when, on December 26, 2025, philanthropists Mary and Mark Stevens committed what has been described publicly only as "several million dollars" — enough to do something Oasis had never done in its eleven years at that address: buy the building it performs in.

That acquisition, completed through Oasis Arts — a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that incorporated in July 2022 — ran $3.5 million for the property. The venue, which has occupied this corner of SoMa's bar corridor under successive names since 1968, will reopen on July 17 under the billing "The Grand Reveal." A second event is already booked for July 26, a rooftop show timed to the Dore Alley street fair.

The deal splits the operation into two entities: Oasis LLC, which handles bar operations, and Oasis Arts, which holds the building and oversees programming. D'Arcy Drollinger, who opened the current Oasis on New Year's Eve 2014 and personally absorbed roughly $500,000 in operating losses since the pandemic, shifts from owner-operator to Artistic Director. Greg Sottolano, a Broadway producer and investor, comes in as Executive Director.

Building ownership is the structural change that distinguishes this from a straight rescue. The venue had been running more than 350 events per year and distributing roughly $800,000 annually to artists, even as the operation was, in Drollinger's words to SFist, "still only barely breaking even." Eliminating rent from the ledger and opening access to grant funding — neither available to a for-profit club — changes the math that pushed Oasis to the edge in the first place.

The Stevens family's connection to the venue ran through their son Sky, a regular at 298 11th. Mark Stevens is the managing partner of the Menlo Park venture firm S-Cubed Capital.

The rescue almost didn't happen. Before the Stevens grant arrived, Oasis had raised roughly $575,000 across a GiveButter campaign ($270,000), a drag telethon ($250,000-plus), and contributions tied to the Drag Laureate program — nowhere near enough to buy a building. The Stevens commitment, communicated December 20, 2025, cleared the gap.

Renovation work now underway includes Champagne Room bar upgrades and roof repairs; bathroom murals remain contingent on additional fundraising being led by incoming Development Director Madeline Howard.

At 298 11th, the front door will be open again in four weeks. The building it opens onto belongs, for the first time, to the people who built what's inside it.