North Park Theatre’s Protectors Believe the Shows Must Go On

In 1987, in one of the last shows performed at the North Park Theatre before the city ordered it to close its doors, for fear that it might fall down during an earthquake, pop singer Suzanne Vega earned a standing ovation for her hit song, “Luka,” about a child who’s abused.

At that moment, it was hard to imagine the North Park being “unsafe and unfit” for the 1,186 who sat inside, as city officials now say it was.

At the corner of 29th Street and University Avenue in North Park, once the center of a thriving commercial area, the 61-year-old theater sits empty, closed off to the public.

Its demise mirrors that of the neighborhood around it, which is trying to make a comeback, much like an aging athlete willing to give it one more go. Opportunists hope for stores and shops and chi chi delis catering to yuppies. But it hasn’t happened yet, and cynics say it won’t.

The area still includes the Salvation Army Thrift Store and the Paras News Stand, which has been there since 1925, when Calvin Coolidge was president.

And, of course, it still includes the theater, which has served as host to Dickensian plays, silent and “talkie” movies, stand-up comics, body-building forums, opera, rock ‘n’ roll, fundamentalist faith-healing and sad ballads about loving but battered children.

Opened in 1929, just before the stock market crash and the onset of the Great Depression, the North Park Theatre is too old, too musty and too tied to the past ever to be confused with a child.

But its protectors, who long to see it brought up to code and reopened as a performing arts center in a community starved for redevelopment, say it has been abused.

Until recently, said Martin Gregg, head of the North Park Theatre Foundation, the San Diego Police Department was using the interior of the 1,186-seat theater as a training site for its corps of German Shepherd police dogs. And again last week, for what Gregg said was the “umpteenth” time, the theater was vandalized.

Gregg, who loves the theater and wants to see it restored the way that some people crave the delicate resurrection of “fixer-upper” homes, said the building deserves better than going to the dogs.

“It’s in 75% better condition than the Balboa Theatre, which may cost $11 million to restore,” Gregg said. “We at the foundation think we might be able to bring it up to code for as little as $300,000 to $500,000. We see it as the centerpiece of a revitalized North Park.”

Two months ago, the city purchased the building for $898,600 from its previous owner, Horizon Christian Fellowship, which had managed the theater for a decade, using it for fundamentalist religious services.

Gregg and the other two members of the fledgling North Park Theatre Foundation hope the theater can be reborn but in an entirely different way from what the church had in mind.

“I see it as the permanent home for a fleet of ethnic-oriented arts organizations,” Gregg said. “We can be the mecca for Asian, black, Latino, gay and senior groups. And, we can have pop music concerts and all sorts of other things as well.”

As head of the now-defunct California Performing Arts Center, Gregg had booked a panoply of arts events into the North Park--including the Vega concert, as well as dozens of plays, musicals and clown shows--and had done so under the auspices of its Christian owners.

Now the theater is struggling to stay alive, to prove it belongs. Gregg and its backers say the North Park offers terrific freeway access, from Interstates 8 and 805, and that a thriving, restored arts center would serve as a magnet for restaurants and those chi chi shops that might attract young professionals and the money they like to spend.

But the city is always in the shadows, reminding the hopeful of realities. A 1988 structural engineering report commissioned by the city manager’s office noted that it would take $1.4 million to bring the building up to code. The same report cited another $2.3 million as being necessary to make the former vaudeville emporium “usable” as a theater.

Cindy Kodama, property agent for the city of San Diego, said the theater simply fails to adhere to the city’s building code. For one, the roof is not “appropriately” anchored to the walls, making it dangerous in high winds or earthquakes.

A large crack threatens the second-floor weight-bearing beam, and part of the mezzanine, built without a permit, must be removed or reconstructed in accordance with the code.

“The aisles, the stairwells, the restrooms--none of these conform to regulations affecting the handicapped,” Kodama said. “So, all will have to be improved or completely replaced.”

Despite the drawbacks, Kodama said a financially strapped city government supports a private group--such as Gregg’s foundation--managing the one-time showplace and indeed making it the centerpiece of a long-overdue redevelopment. She said that’s the main reason the city--using Community Development Block Grant funds--bought the building in the first place.

Even in the wake of a $60-million budget crisis, Kodama said the city would rather see the theater restored as a working arts center than to have it demolished and the land converted to commercial use.

She said Gregg’s foundation has the inside track for managing the site, but in her words, “We are open to a mixed-use type of project. Really, we’re open to just about anything that makes sense. We just don’t want it to sit there.”

The theater has lain fallow for more than two years, and Kodama said any structure allowed to “just sit there and fester” will soon deteriorate even more. At the moment, the theater is officially closed, labeled “unsafe and unfit,” in Kodama’s words, by the city that owns it.

“We’re constantly out there removing graffiti,” she said. “Periodically, we have crews in there removing trash and litter, and, we have a problem with the homeless. They’ve broken into the back of the building once and have tried to break in on other occasions, and we know they’re in there, because we’re always finding cups and napkins and trash strewn about. We hope to have an alarm system installed soon.”

But at the moment, the theater is an unguarded edifice. Kodama explained the police using it as a canine training center by saying, “Whenever we have a vacant building like that, the police like to expose the dogs to a new target. Dogs that train in the same building over and over know it’s not the real thing. The dogs are not there anymore, but at the time, we wanted to insure that the police had a visible posture in the area.”

City Councilman John Hartley, whose district includes North Park, succeeded Gloria McColl, who favored the purchase--and restoration--of the theater.

Hartley said that initially he “felt the resources could be better used elsewhere, but the community fought hard for keeping the theater, so I suppose we should do that. It fits well in the redevelopment plans for North Park.”

Gregg and Mark Hannon, president of the North Park Business Assn., say the first objective is “establishing a dialogue with the city” and making the place “workable.” Gregg believes no more than $500,000 is needed to bring the building to code, a figure based on architectural studies obtained privately. Having it reopened would, he said, greatly enhance fund-raising efforts.

Additional money could restore the place, and, he said, turn it into a headquarters for dozens of small theatrical and musical companies, especially those with an “ethnic flavor.”

Gregg has enlisted 44 arts organizations to serve as the foundation’s advisory board. They include the San Diego Chinese Community School of Music, the Black Arts Program of the UC San Diego Department of Theatre and the (East Indian) Raga Ranjani School of Music.

The theatrical and art groups listed on the board include Sledgehammer Theatre, which is currently producing a 5-hour version of “Hamlet” but lacks a permanent home; Diversionary Theatre, a gay organization, and Centro Cultural de la Raza, whose focus is Latino.

Gregg believes such groups are largely disenfranchised but capable of doing “wonderful” work. As he puts it, the city’s arts scene is hardly limited to the Old Globe Theatre and the La Jolla Playhouse, and the city would suffer with the demise of smaller groups, many of which are talented but homeless.

R.F. McCann, who heads a Pasadena architectural firm that specializes in the restoration of theaters, said he had been asked by the foundation to study the city’s engineering report to see if the figures “added up.”

McCann said before a walk-through--he has yet to tour the theater--he could not render a full analysis but added that $300,000 to $500,000 to bring the building up to code was “entirely possible.”

“City (engineering) estimates tend to be much higher than those done by private consultants,” he said. “It’s not that the cities are wrong, it’s just that the work can usually be done for a lot less.”

David Thompson, an architect who lives in North Park, is working with Gregg’s foundation to try to determine the exact amount needed to reopen the theater, which he said the community desperately needs.

Thompson conceded the theater has a “relatively brittle structure” and “a roof that isn’t tied into the walls” but said the thrust of the city report was “too negative,” focusing more on what could not be done with the theater than with honing in on and extrapolating its possibilities.

“The theater could be the catalyst for completely upgrading the area,” Thompson said. “And the time is right, because so many young couples who can’t afford to buy elsewhere in San Diego are moving in here. North Park is changing.

“The theater could stimulate the value of property so that something thrives in the area besides . . . thrift shops. While I like thrift shops, there can only be so many. In Hillcrest, the Guild and the Park (movie theaters) have contributed to revitalization--greatly, I would say. We think the North Park Theatre can do the same in North Park. But we shouldn’t wait too long.”