Stage Silent Awaiting the Wreckers : High-Rise Tower Slated to Replace California Theatre

The California Theatre, which opened in 1927 with the movie “The Venus of Venice,” may soon be torn down to make way for a 34-story office building.

Wednesday’s appearance by the Cowboy Junkies, a Canadian folk-rock group, was the theater’s last scheduled concert. After a bodybuilding show and an organ recital later this month, the California has no remaining dates on its calendar.

The 30 or so tenants in offices above the theater were evicted months ago; those remaining have gotten their notices.

“Barring a miracle,” as one put it, all will be gone from the corner of 4th Avenue and C Street by Sept. 15, if not sooner.

However, David Swarens, president of the Save Our Heritage Organization (SOHO), said his group plans to ask the city’s Historical Site Board at its meeting next month to award the theater a historical designation--which could “stay execution” for up to a year.

“It’s sad,” said Yousef Abudayyeh, whose family owns Uneeda Market & Deli, otherwise known as Harb’s, a popular downtown sandwich shop since 1972. “But not as sad as what they’re going to do with this building.”

Abudayyeh said he can find another place, perhaps one equally popular and less expensive to lease. Even so, he would like to stay, as would Gai Tran, manager of the Eastern Chinese Restaurant, which is owned by her son, Hung Phung.

“I want to die--right now,” Tran said, when asked what the building’s demise would do to her business.

Tran said she and her son spent $40,000 opening the restaurant and another $60,000 remodeling what used to be a doughnut shop. Others affected include Tecate Sam’s, which serves Mexican food; Beefmaster’s, which specializes in chili dogs, and Travelers’ Aid, a relief organization for the homeless.

“I really don’t want to move,” Tran said, “but what choice do we have?”

Owner of the theater is the 4th and C Corp., an umbrella organization encompassing the five charities that inherited the building from the late Ariel Wharton (Bud) Coggleshall, a building supply owner who died in 1986 at the age of 84.

Co-owner of the site is Hillman Properties, a vast real estate holding firm with offices in Pittsburgh and Newport Beach that hopes to construct a $200-million office complex.

The primary charity benefiting from the property is the San Diego Community Foundation, founded in 1975. Its executive director, Helen Monroe, said the foundation gave away more than $2 million last year to a variety of institutions, including zoos, hospitals, museums, churches and drug-treatment centers.

The foundation has raised and given away $45 million over the past eight years, she said. Its beneficiaries include neighborhood improvement projects, a summer reading program for children and the photographic archive at the San Diego Historical Society.

Monroe said the money the foundation can realize--an estimated “net” of $200,000 a year--far outweighs the benefit of preserving a faded, albeit historic, theater.

She called it “a tough choice and a true dilemma,” but said, “we figured it would be better to maximize our earnings. Our wish is to spread the wealth, as we’ve always done . . . through the entire community.”

James J. Lantry, a recent congressional candidate who runs his own consulting firm, said he plans to lobby on the theater’s behalf at the Historical Site Board meeting.

“It is, in many ways, a sad story, a classic lose-lose situation,” Lantry said. “The San Diego Community Foundation is a worthwhile group, very much so. If not allowed to proceed, the foundation loses. But if they do proceed, and it looks like they will, then history loses. Because a valuable theater--one that’s still quite active--will have been lost forever.

“I really don’t see bad guys or good guys, not in this case. I see a dilemma with no easy answer.”

Raymond Brandes, a dean at the University of San Diego and local historian, said the California opened 63 years ago, in the same year that Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs for the New York Yankees.

He calls the theater the last of a dying breed, a 1,750-seat movie “palace” equally suited for music and live theater, complete with a legendary Wurlitzer organ.

The organ, owned by the San Diego Organ Society, will soon move to a yet-to-be-determined new home.

“I find it somewhat distressing when you have something that’s truly historic, and either nothing is done or someone reacts at the last minute,” Brandes said. “No one benefits because of inaction. I see (the demise of the California) as another signal that the once-great motion picture era is just about dead in San Diego.”

Brandes’ school--USD--is one of the beneficiaries of Coggleshall’s will. In addition to the San Diego Community Foundation, the others are the San Diego Crew Classic, the San Diego Rowing Club (Coggleshall supported both avidly), and the Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Steve Karo, whose own efforts at historical preservation have included saving the Balboa Theatre, said the argument advanced most often about downtown redevelopment is “the need to bring people to the heart of the city”--particularly young people.

“The California has done that for years,” Karo said. “In fact, it’s still doing it. So, why destroy it?”

Avalon Attractions, a Los Angeles-based promotion company, has booked an average of 30 concerts a year into the California since signing an agreement with the owners two years ago, said David Swift, Avalon’s local representative.

Swift said that Avalon is looking elsewhere but mourns the loss of a space known for “superb” acoustics.

“We’ve booked everything in there--acoustic rock, hard rock, comedy, jazz . . . you name it,” Swift said. “All have worked well. It’s been a super venue for the shows we’ve had.”

Until recently, the California was also used for live theater. It served as a temporary home for the Old Globe Theatre, which burned to the ground in 1978. The San Diego Repertory Theatre used the California for several performances of its annual classic, “A Christmas Carol.”

James Follingstad, who represents Hillman Properties, said his company envisions the new project’s 34 stories as having a four-plex movie theater and a shopping mall modeled after an airy, botanical garden.

“The theater is old and tired and lousy,” Follingstad said. “And frankly, we wouldn’t have been interested in the property if it meant preserving the theater.”

Follingstad said Hillman Properties has spent about $70,000 researching the question of what to do with the theater. He calls it “structurally inadequate, not up to code.” He said “absolutely not” to the question of whether Hillman would consider restoring the theater and building up and around it--as was done at Copley Symphony Hall.

Follingstad said the company intends to develop the entire square block on which the theater sits--between 3rd and 4th avenues on the west and east, B and C streets on the north and south.

Hillman’s main challenge will come at the July meeting of the Historical Site Board, which could designate the theater a historic site that should be saved. If that happens, Hillman can appeal to the City Council, which is likely to side with the San Diego Community Foundation.

But, if council votes to preserve the theater, the “stay of execution” only lasts for a year, said Carol Lindemulder, who chairs the Historical Site Board. If, at the end of a year, Hillman Properties wants to proceed, it may do so, Lindemulder said, regardless of any challenges mounted in the interim.

Follingstad said the company “would probably not wait, not for a year.”

“How could we afford to?” he said. “How could the foundation? They’d be losing the whole time, when the whole purpose here was to make money. It just isn’t smart.”

Gloria Poore, who hopes to construct a mixed-use arts project in another Coggleshall property, the old Carnation factory on K Street--also owned by the foundation--reacts to the California’s dilemma with a mixture of sadness and bemusement.

She knew Coggleshall, as a friend and associate, but the memories are mixed. She does not find it surprising that what he left behind has resulted in what Monroe calls “a true dilemma.”

“He was eccentric, the definition of a true miser,” Poore said. “He didn’t have an open mind or a contemporary sense, and he wasn’t very sophisticated. But, in his own peculiar way, he tried to do what he could for the arts in San Diego.”

Poore said that Coggleshall “never ceased to amaze me.” She said that, after every theater event, he would confiscate from the restrooms the unused toilet paper and “take it to his house--to use in his home.”

“Bud didn’t waste a thing,” Poore said. “His office at the junkyard--the junkyard was his pride and joy--was cluttered with papers, none of which he read. They might be unfinished deals, letters from attorneys, whatever. He just didn’t bother.

“But his eyes would light up at the prospect of putting 50 cents in his pocket. Bud got more excited by that than a business deal for half a million dollars.”

Poore said that, aside from the rowing club and the crew classic, Coggleshall was not devoted to the charities that reaped his windfall. She said it was simply a case of his attorney telling him that’s where it ought to go--to charity.

He had no heirs, she said; his son and ex-wives had faded from his life years earlier. And, she said, he never did much for the theater, either, after buying it from the Mann Theatres chain in 1975. She said it remained in disrepair until 1988, when the new owners undertook a minor remodeling (new carpeting and paint).

“His inattention and lack of caring is largely the reason it’s in the shape--and the mess--it’s in today,” Poore said.

Barring a protest, Follingstad said, demolition and construction should begin by spring, and the new building should open by 1993.