Vote for New Art Center May Be Final Curtain for Old Balboa Theater

In a watershed decision for the future of the San Diego Arts Center, the City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to continue negotiations aimed at gutting the 62-year-old Balboa Theater and building a museum and retail center in its stead.

The council rejected the arguments of preservationists seeking ways to restore the old theater for art films and stage productions.

Arts center founder Danah Fayman had threatened to abandon her ambitious plans for the museum if the council declined to authorize additional negotiations between the San Diego Arts Center and the Centre City Development Corp. Fayman, who has put two years of work and a $500,000 investment into the project, proposes putting a museum of contemporary design, architecture and art inside the old dome-topped, art deco-style theater at 4th Avenue and E Street downtown.

“We’re just at the point where we can’t afford any more delays,” Fayman told the council before half a dozen supporters--ranging from Old Globe executive director Craig Noel to former mayor Frank Curran--urged the council to let Fayman, CCDC and the theater’s prospective developer, Lincoln Investment Corp. of San Diego, continue to work toward a final agreement.

Lincoln Investment President Christopher Mortenson, whose development firm has renovated several historic buildings downtown, added, “It is important to save old buildings. But you only save buildings that you can demonstrate economic viability for. The theater as it exists is an economic albatross.”

The 7-0 vote came on a technical issue: whether to renew for 60 days an expired negotiating agreement between CCDC, which is the city’s downtown redevelopment agency; the San Diego Arts Center, and the Lincoln Investment Corp., a development firm that would turn the first two floors of the theater into retail shops.

The three parties said they expect to reach a final agreement in mid-April, but no later than within 60 days, at which time they will seek final approval from the council.

San Diegans to Save Our Balboa, a citizens group consisting of some of the theater’s owners and local preservationists, argued Tuesday for a 60-day moratorium on negotiations.

Save Our Balboa members said that if the arts center negotiations were suspended, their group would find $1 million in financing to restore the “magnificent, glorious, golden palace.” They said Save Our Balboa would also arrange for small theatrical groups or a children’s acting school to lease the building and thus provide new sources of funding that would pay to preserve the structure.

“Once it is gutted, it can never be preserved to capture its former glory,” said Mary Jarrell of the Save Our Heritage Organization, another preservation group.

When the council voted against them after three hours of debate, Save our Balboa members were bitter.

“It’s a travesty,” said Celia Russo Wetherbee, who with several other members of the Russo family owns an interest in the building.

Added Michelle del Grande, Wetherbee’s granddaughter, “There’s nothing we can do. As far as I know, they have a 60-day exclusive bargaining agreement which precludes us from bargaining. And at the end, there will be a declaration in fine print: the order to condemn our building.”

Del Grande claimed that once CCDC officials became interested in Fayman’s art center two years ago, they had refused to negotiate with the Russo family.

CCDC officials vigorously denied the claim. CCDC Executive Director Gerald Trimble said his staff had had numerous, but futile, meetings with other members of the Russo family, who did not attend Tuesday’s hearing but who reportedly said they were unable to finance a major renovation of the theater.

The Balboa Theater is a distinctive, cream-colored building on the western edge of the city’s Horton Plaza Retail Center. The multimillion-dollar shopping center is expected to become a key ingredient in San Diego’s redevelopment when it opens next August, and CCDC officials have long wanted to link the old dome-topped theater to the complex.

The theater was built in 1924 as a combination film and vaudeville house seating 1,434 people. Live performances were held there through the 1940s.

But over the years, as downtown San Diego south of Broadway grew seedy, the theater fell on hard times. Its patrons these days are sailors, transients or senior citizens who pay $4 ($2 for seniors) to watch such films as “Lust in the Dust” or “Make Them Die Slowly.”

Although the theater is still impressive with its two-tiered dome, high vaulted ceilings and small, still-working fountains on either side of the stage, some of its prominent architectural features have been oddly painted. The columns downstairs and the wood on the vaulted ceilings are a garish blue. The exterior of the building is a pale yellow with flesh-tone accents.

Mortenson, the prospective developer, said the building needs millions of dollars of improvements to meet current building codes.

CCDC officials estimate it will cost $1 million to refurbish the exterior of the structure. That money will be provided by CCDC, which will acquire the building, probably by condemnation.

If the agency reaches a final agreement with Lincoln Investments and Fayman, then Lincoln, as the developer, would obtain $4 million in financing to turn the bottom two floors into 16,000 square feet of retail stores that will connect to the Horton Plaza complex. Fayman would renovate the upper two floors--about 30,000 square feet--for the art center and would sublease that space from Lincoln for $250,000 a year. CCDC director Trimble said there was no way the interior of the theater could be saved under the renovation plan. He did say, however, that “a portion of the fabric of the theater” would be saved in the art center “so you would see some of the ceiling and the waterfalls.”

Trimble said CCDC consultants had reported that turning the building into a viable theater or a single- or multiple-screen movie theater would not be a money-making proposition. The cost of turning it into a modern movie theater would be $2.2 million to $3.3 million. However, the competition from a seven-screen movie theater next door in Horton Plaza would make it difficult to fill the old theater, he said. And refurbishing the stage for live performances would cost from $6 million to $8 million, Trimble said.

In addition, Old Globe Executive Director Craig Noel and Kit Goldman, director of the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre, told the council that the Balboa would make a poor theater because it has no backstage area. “This theater has no potential as a motion picture house” and died as a first-run theater because it lacked space backstage, Noel said.

Spokesmen from Save Our Balboa disagreed. Martin Gregg, executive director of California Performing Arts for Children, said he would have stage performances at the Balboa, plus a major children’s school of performing arts that would be the San Diego equivalent of the famed Juilliard School in New York.

Council members said they sympathized with Save Our Balboa’s efforts to keep the old theater. Still, Councilman Dick Murphy wondered, CCDC had been talking to Fayman about using the building for an arts center for some time. “Where have they (the preservationists) been for the last year and a half?” he asked.

“The arts center people have committed two years of time and $500,000 of their own money, and are at the threshold of financial planning that will work. Then another group comes to this at the last minute” with a plan that may or may not work, Murphy said.

“The arts center has spent too much time--and it’s very real--to throw it out at the last minute,” Murphy said.

The council then voted 7-0 to continue negotiations with the arts center. (Mayor Roger Hedgecock and Councilman Mike Gotch were on vacation.)