Dark Theaters Dot San Diego’s Landscape

When a theater is not in use, it is said to be dark. By that definition, San Diego sometimes seems on the verge of a total eclipse.

Ever wonder why the nation’s eighth largest city has so many large theaters lying dormant, their shabby marquees hanging limp and bare on desolate streets?

The Balboa Theater is the most infamous of this brigade, but it is hardly alone, even as it sits incongruously amid the glitter of Horton Plaza. The Balboa, at least, summons attention.

Will it be an arts center or a playhouse? The Balboa Theatre Foundation announced plans just this week to make it a playhouse. Still, the City Council has the final say. Any plan involving the Balboa seems to draw controversy in the way that picnics draw flies.

What’s surprising is that so many other San Diego theaters have been neglected, or forgotten.

Take, for instance, the Adams Avenue Theatre in Normal Heights. It was built in the 1920s, when Western shoot-’em-ups were the rage. It hasn’t been used as a movie house for years. In fact, it hasn’t been used for much of anything in years. It was tried for a while as a “punk” nightclub, but the current owner says, “That won’t be tried--ever again.”

It is now for sale for $300,000. The line for takers is short.

The State Theatre on El Cajon Boulevard, near San Diego State University, is a symbol of unfulfilled promise. A real estate broker, hoping to sell it for $750,000, said it was built with a misplaced eye to the future.

“That part of San Diego was supposed to be the next frontier,” said Harry Stone of Daum-Johnstown-American. “Development was supposed to go east, away from the beach. The new homes, the more successful people--supposedly, they were headed that way. It just didn’t happen.”

The State was last used for Vietnamese movies but they, too, went the way of the Edsel and the miniskirt. Stone hopes the State will be sold and converted to a mixed-use office complex.

“In a way, it’s too bad,” he said. “It would have been a great teen nightclub, but the San Diego Police Department wouldn’t allow a cabaret license.”

The North Park Theatre was built in 1925, for vaudeville shows and films. The North Park was the first local theater with a full stage outside the downtown area. It hasn’t shown movies in years, though attempts are being made to make it a full-time playhouse.

The Center for Performing Arts leases the North Park from a fundamentalist religious group, which owns the building and had been using it for church. To go from “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus” to “Bah, Humbug!” (a recent production) illustrates the problem:

No one can quite figure out what to do with these places.

The Broadway Theatre, a former movie house on Broadway near 8th Avenue, lies dormant. James Holman, publisher of the San Diego Reader, operated the Broadway for three months, leaving in January, 1984. He hoped to show foreign and avant-garde films for longer periods than the repertory Ken Theatre, where one or two-night runs are the norm.

“It didn’t work at all,” Holman said. “It was a terrible idea.”

Holman rented the theater, for a whopping $5,000 a month, from Jacquie Littlefield, who holds the lease to the building. The owner of the Broadway is a trust, administered by San Diego Trust and Savings Bank.

“I had just recently sold my shares in the Chicago Reader,” Holman said. “The profits were in the tens of thousands of dollars--I don’t remember exactly how much. To make a long story short, I lost everything I’d made off the sale.”

Holman said the Broadway’s location is bad, being too far from the Gaslamp Quarter, too far from Horton Plaza and, generally, on the fringes of downtown. Fear and skepticism were common reactions to what he thought was a great idea. People worried about vagrants, about venturing too far out of their way. Why would an avant-garde film buff drive downtown when he could walk to the Ken, in Kensington? After the novelty wore off--and it wore off fast--that was precisely Holman’s problem.

“I think Horton Plaza has the curious effect of polarizing downtown,” he said. “Parts of downtown--away from the plaza--are even sleazier, even more remote, than they were before.”

Holman labeled the experience unpleasant for other reasons. He eventually entered into a lawsuit with Littlefield, one contention being his rent was too high.

“He quickly learned our rent was lower than his,” Littlefield said. “We owned the seats and all the equipment and so forth, and felt entitled to the price we charged.”

“I was willing to sublease for $3,000 and make up the difference myself,” Holman said. “She felt the theater was worth $5,000--period. I talked to others, and they said I was foolish to pay that. The Spreckels (Theatre, which Littlefield owns) poses the same problem--the rent is way too high, and she’s extremely unreasonable.”

Littlefield’s is a name that keeps popping up in the world of San Diego theater. Her father, Lou Metzger, acquired the Spreckels in 1932. She took over the operation in 1944, when her father died. She was only a teen-ager. In 1962, she bought the Spreckels Building from Oakley J. Hall, a former sea captain.

The Spreckels Theatre hasn’t been used on a daily basis in years. Still, it may be premature to put it in the dormant category. Some agree with Holman that the rent is high--$10,000 a week.

Littlefield disagrees.

“I feel we’ve been giving the arts quite a break,” she said, explaining that a recent San Diego Opera Chorus benefit concert for AIDS research was held rent-free. “A theater like that should actually bring in $15,000 a week, in a major city such as San Diego. Its capacity is 1,472, and its acoustics are the best in the world.”

Littlefield said she negotiated with David Atherton, former conductor and music director of the San Diego Symphony, to have the Spreckels and not the Fox Theatre be the new home of the orchestra that appears to have no home, no players and no conductor.

She admitted she has entertained offers from developers who “lust after” the building she owns. She won’t sell, she said, adding that if she had, the theater would already be gone.

“I like to hold on to such things,” she said. “I don’t sell art, buildings or antiques.”

She would like to see live theater adorn the Spreckels on a regular basis. She would like to see “pre-Broadway” productions played there, as a kind of tryout for Manhattan. She would like to see jazz groups, vocal recitalists and chamber orchestras also share its space. She says its acoustics put Symphony Hall to shame.

“The symphony fell apart mainly because people who made pledges were so disappointed with the acoustics (of the new Symphony Hall, formerly the Fox) that they just didn’t honor them,” Littlefield said. “It’s so sad to see the symphony go under, when it didn’t have to.”

Littlefield would like a subsidy from the city as a way of keeping the Spreckels going. She feels it’s entitled to one, that a “valuable resource” is being neglected. She said lack of funding and “dilution of product” have damaged the arts, from San Diego to New York to Kankakee.

“Too few people are trying to support too many activities in San Diego,” she said. “Nobody is doing a good job of anything. The opera loses Tito Capobianco (its former director), the symphony is in flux and ballet is gone except for the California Ballet.

“We’re just limited today to how many dollars people have to spend for theater. That’s why we have to have city help.

“We even compete with sports--that, too, is an entertainment dollar. The same people who used to spend money on theater are now splitting it with sports--the demand to have box seats is enormous. There’s so many games . . . A husband and wife have to prudently divide their entertainment budget.

“Maybe we’re just running out of money in America. We have one further problem here--the weather. If I can sit around the pool, the beach or the boat past sundown, why do I want to go rushing home to put on a fancy outfit for a night at the theater? There’s too much to do, not enough time, not enough money, and we’re talking about opening more theaters.”

David Thompson, executive director of the San Diego Safety Council, is a long-standing patron of the arts. He once worked for the Old Globe Theatre and the symphony and later headed the Broadway Theatre League and the International Artists Series. With the latter group, he brought the Bolshoi Ballet to the Spreckels.

“With those groups, we lived off (proceeds from) the box office,” he said. “You can’t do that anymore. You have to have outside help. It puts a whole different slant on the aspect of touring. Nowadays, it costs a lot to tour and to pay for a Bolshoi.”

Thompson agreed with Littlefield that San Diego’s product is diluted in all sorts of ways and figures to get more so.

“We’re not like an Eastern city,” he said. “The opportunities for leisure time are more diverse. This is not Boston, in terms of funding or people looking for indoor entertainment in the winter. And, of course, subsidies--getting them, finding groups to give them--are even more of a problem.”

Thompson pointed out that many of San Diego’s wealthy people have their roots somewhere else--Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York--and may feel compelled to support the arts in those cities. Disappearing sports teams, fading arts institutions may be a product of “the transplant factor” as much as anything.

The same holds true for corporations. Many of those don’t hold bases here. General Dynamics, for instance, is based in St. Louis.

“It makes supporting the arts even more complicated than it was already,” Thompson said.

And those old theaters?

Maybe they’re nothing more than symbols, Thompson said--symbols of an easier time for the arts, reminders that bringing them back to life is hardly an easy proposition.