The curtain may rise again at Oakland’s Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, the beloved old auditorium on Lake Merritt that hosted everything from the Grateful Dead to George Clinton to two U.S. presidents before it closed a decade ago.

Two developers have bid on the chance to refurbish and reopen the century-old Beaux Arts landmark. Both plans — at the city’s behest — call for the restoration of the 1,900-seat Calvin Simmons Theater, and both include a mix of offices and public space in the rest of the building.

“Anyone who grew up in the Bay Area has some emotional attachment to the Kaiser auditorium,” said Oakland city spokeswoman Karen Boyd. “We’re really excited to get this place open again.”

The city plans to retain ownership of the building and issue a long-term lease to a developer, who would oversee its makeover and find tenants. Ideally, the ornate, 215,000-square-foot building would house some combination of entertainment venues, offices, retail and restaurant space, and become a focal point for the Lake Merritt area, said urban planner Kelley Kahn, who is overseeing the project for the city.

“Incubators, offices, a brewery, a grand piazza — anything like that would be great,” she said. “We want something where the public is invited in, and the whole site is used.”

Local developers

The two developers vying for the job, Orton Development of Emeryville and Creative Development Partners of Oakland, will meet with a panel of city staff, residents and development experts to go over the details. In January or February, the panel will recommend a winning firm to the City Council. The City Council will probably vote by early March, Kahn said.

The site is hard to top. The building sits regally at the western edge of Lake Merritt, between Laney College and the Oakland Museum of California. When the Lake Merritt restoration is complete, the property will be bounded by a new pathway connecting the lake to the estuary and the slew of development planned there.

The site is almost as spectacular as the building itself. Built in 1915, it’s a seemingly endless labyrinth of entertainment spaces, including ballrooms, banquet rooms and theaters. The largest space is the 45,000-square-foot arena, where the Grateful Dead played 50 shows between 1967 and 1989 and Elvis Presley played one of his first Bay Area shows. The roster of luminaries who performed or spoke there is long and eclectic: Green Day, Kiss, James Brown, Martin Luther King Jr., the Dalai Lama, George Clinton, Bill Clinton and Woodrow Wilson are on the list.

Roller derby, Christmas pageants, garden shows and high school graduations were also regular events. In 1918, it became a hospital for victims of the flu epidemic. The Oakland East Bay Symphony performed there for decades. In short, the building was in almost constant use for 90 years, an all-purpose gathering spot for East Bay residents of all stripes.

“It was built just after the 1906 earthquake, when Oakland was really trying to escalate itself,” said city historian Betty Marvin. “There was no Coliseum then, no Fox Theater, no Paramount. This was it. This was the city’s municipal auditorium.”

In fact, for decades that was the building’s official name: the Oakland Municipal Auditorium. The city renamed it after industrialist Henry J. Kaiser in the 1980s.

In 2005, the city closed the building because of budget problems, and it’s suffered occasional vandalism since then. Some of the copper wiring has been stripped, and in 2011 Occupy protesters tried to take it over.

Good condition

But overall, according to public works crews, the building is in decent shape. A recent walking tour revealed almost no cracks in the walls or leaks in the ceiling, and the century-old seats seemed to be in immaculate condition, if a little dusty. In the darkened arena, one could almost hear the joyous opening chords of “I Feel Good.”

Outside, the seven grand entrance arches are intact. They depict bas-relief pictorials of “Consolation of the Arts,” “Duties of Life,” “The Wealth of the Mind,” “The Joy of Effort” and other platitudes.

Marvin said it’s no accident the building has withstood a century of heavy use, several large earthquakes and a foundation built on a marsh.

“They weren’t stupid when they built this,” Marvin said. “They knew about earthquakes. World-class engineers and architects designed this place, and they knew what they were doing. It’s a great old building.”

Carolyn Jones is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: carolynjones@sfchronicle.com