Valley Music Theater Faces Wrecking Ball

The San Fernando Valley’s first cultural center--a 2,865-seat theater-in-the-round built 25 years ago in Woodland Hills to showcase Broadway musicals--will soon be torn down to make way for an apartment project, officials said.

A religious group that uses the defunct Valley Music Theater as a meeting hall is selling the dome-shaped building to a developer who plans to build 350 rental units in its place.

The Valley Circuit of the Jehovah’s Witnesses will move from the distinctive circular structure on Ventura Boulevard to a larger headquarters in the Newhall area, apartment developer Jay Wilton said.

The Valley Music Theater, backed by entertainers Bob Hope and Art Linkletter, opened July 6, 1964, with a gala performance of “The Sound of Music.” Even though the theater drew 600,000 patrons to 18 musicals and an assortment of concerts during its first year, it was failing by 1966.

Efforts to revive it by staging such attractions as professional boxing matches on the theater’s circular stage also failed.