Supervisors back plan to turn historic East L.A. theater into a drugstore

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously voiced support Tuesday for plans to turn the long-abandoned Golden Gate Theatre in East Los Angeles into a 24-hour drugstore despite passionate last-minute appeals by some residents to block the project.

Supervisor Gloria Molina, whose district includes the theater, said that while the project would not restore the theater to its full glory, it was better than leaving the building vacant and dilapidated.

“The best we have is a compromise, and at least leaving it in place and preserving it” as much as possible, Molina said. “At the end of the day, it has been an eyesore.”

The Golden Gate Theatre was built in 1927 and its entrance replicates the portal of the University of Salamanca in Spain, built in a Spanish-baroque style. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it is one of the few remaining neighborhood movie palaces built in the 1920s. The facility stopped playing movies in 1986.

The drugstore project was approved by planning commissioners in March and will “preserve the integrity of the historic building exterior,” according to a county document.

Many of the architecturally defining features on the interior will be preserved “by encasing them behind new walls and obscuring them from view by suspended ceilings.”

“This is not just a building. It is a theater … a monument, the last one in East L.A.,” drugstore opponent Sam Barraza told the supervisors. “The spirit of East L.A. is at stake.”

Other residents and merchants supported the project, saying it would bring needed jobs to the struggling commercial center.

“The addition of a national pharmacy chain will be a tremendous benefit,” said Jesse Torres, chief executive of East L.A.-based Pan American Bank.

ron.lin@latimes.com