Pavilion Takes Center Stage in Venice Renewal : The 600-seat theater and multipurpose facility is called an eyesore by those who want it torn down, but it is seen as a jewel by preservationists

Cursed as much as it is blessed by its identification with the Italian city that symbolizes the Renaissance era, Venice is forever attempting a renaissance of its own. This can be a vexing struggle, and the building that most acutely symbolizes the beachside community’s own rebirth pangs is the Venice Pavilion, one of the most controversial structures on Southern California’s coast.

What looks like an above-the-ground bomb shelter to some is a cultural jewel in the sand for others. What most see when they look at the pavilion, however, is a big question mark.

Take Alan Nakagawa, for instance. Programmer for education and outreach for the Venice-based Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), Nakagawa loves to talk about Venice’s wealth of public murals. One is Rip Cronk’s large work, “Venice Reconstituted,” which links town revivalism with Sandro Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus.”

If this Venus could see, she would be staring across Venice’s teeming boardwalk to the pavilion.

“She is facing the pavilion with wary eyes,” remarks Nakagawa. “She’s like a lot of us. People don’t know what’s going to happen with that thing.”

The object of Venus’ eye is a 29-year-old oval, 600-seat theater and multipurpose facility, bordered on the north by a walled-in picnic area and on the south by bocce and shuffleboard courts. Like the beach town around it, the 5.2-acre area, operated by the Los Angeles City Recreation and Parks Department, has gone through good times and bad, and is now at the heart of a lengthy urban renewal process aimed at a future Venice recalling its original Italian inspiration.

Whether the pavilion is part of that future is anyone’s guess.

“If it’s preserved, then this would continue the Venice of Abbot Kinney,” says Nakagawa, referring to the community’s founder, whose grand ideas can still be seen in the decaying remnants of Venice’s canals. “If it’s torn down, then that’s the sign of a different Venice. Whatever happens to the pavilion could be a pivotal part of the future of the Venice beach area.”

Although the Venice Waterfront Restoration Plan, as the California Coastal Conservancy-initiated renewal project is known, involves several other key coastal sites--including the aging Venice Pier and the popular, weather-beaten boardwalk--none are supported or scorned more passionately than the pavilion.

“The uses for the pavilion are almost limitless,” contends John Welty, a member of the Coalition to Save Venice Pavilion and an acoustical designer of Los Angeles audio and video studios. To the eyes of Steven Wright, a Venice skater and member of SeaSkate, a local skater’s group in favor of razing the building for a skating recreational area, “It’s a white elephant.”

“All through its history,” notes Jerry Rubin, one of the coalition’s founders and a veteran Westside political activist, “people have had a wonderful time at the pavilion. It was a place where people knew to meet for everything cultural--music, theater, poetry--as well as community gatherings. It could be that way again.”

Venice Action Committee spokesman Jack Hoffmann disagrees. “It isn’t serving the public anymore. Times have changed. All the pavilion provides is a drug-dealing haven. Why throw good money after bad to preserve it?”

Each side claims broad community support. Coalition allies say they speak for Venice, citing petitions with more than 6,000 signatures as evidence. Others, including former Venice Chamber of Commerce president and SeaSkate supporter Marge Alatorre, scoff at this claim, noting that Coastal Conservancy-sponsored public workshops had indicated “overwhelming” support for turning the pavilion area over to skating or open beach. Although Mark Beyeler, conservancy manager of urban waterfront programs, says that consensus hasn’t been reached, the conservancy’s draft study states that “most community members support complete demolition.”

Neither side, however, can claim the support of L.A. City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, who represents Venice. “Several options for the area exist,” says Rick Ruiz, Galanter’s chief aide, “and the decision-making process isn’t over. We need more community input before Ruth can recommend a course of action to council.”

Recreation and Parks head James E. Hadaway says emphatically that his department favors demolition, and it could be difficult to ignore the department’s considerable influence in the final decision-making review. But Ruiz says, “Our minds are open on this issue. Recreation and Park’s stance hasn’t affected” Galanter’s decision-making.

Galanter, says Hoffmann, like every politician dealing with Venice, is facing a number of hot potatoes. “Nobody in power wants to be wrong on this issue.”

Meanwhile, the pavilion theater lies dormant. A recent trip conducted by Recreation and Parks officials showed that the theater is in a filthy condition. That is because, according to Hadaway, the theater has been closed and not regularly cleaned since 1985, but is not condemned.

The pavilion’s subterranean facilities are in use, suggesting to some that the building is not, as a few pavilion critics have termed it, “a dark, vacant bunker.” The Los Angeles Police Department maintains its beach patrol office below the theater, and according to officer Bill Hallett, Ping-Pong and bocce enthusiasts use the adjacent recreation areas on a weekly basis. Hallett, echoing remarks by Ruiz, noted that while crime persists in the area, “there aren’t as many violent crimes as before. A few locals have made it their home for years, but on the whole, it’s not a congregating center for problems.” Attempts to obtain exact crime statistics from the Los Angeles Police Department were unsuccessful.

If there is a problem area, it’s the theater itself. When its rear doors facing the boardwalk are opened, the stench of bird droppings and urine fills the air. Cracks in the boarded-up rear walls let in pigeons and sea gulls, while rats scurry around corners. The light booth is gutted, and lighting grids above the stage are nearly bare. Welty claims that his personal inspection showed the building’s electricity and plumbing to be “fine, and need only basic repair.”

Portions of the pavilion complex appear to be virtually intact: two large dressing rooms, several picnic tables, benches and fireplaces; and a large concession stand and kitchen service area.

But on the same stage where U.S. Senate candidate Gore Vidal spoke during his 1982 campaign, a painted backdrop of the Earth, used in one of the last performances before the 1985 closure, is charred by fire.

To understand the crux of the pavilion mess, partisans on both sides say, you need to look from the stage to the ceiling.

Vernon F. Duckett, 79, an active New York City-based architect, wanted a roof on the pavilion when his bid for a large multipurpose structure won support in City Hall in the late ‘50s. “I pushed for it. But the officials said there wasn’t money for one.”

Duckett proceeded to do the next best thing: build an outdoor band shell theater. The northern half of the round stage faced the outdoor picnic area, making it possible to stage simultaneous outdoor and indoor performances.

It opened in 1961 to, as Duckett recalls, “wonderful applause. Everyone saw it as a great asset to the area.” An early, popular pavilion act: the Lennon Sisters.

Although Duckett insists the acoustics were great, nighttime temperatures and sometimes inclement coastal conditions were not, and the pavilion became known as a cold venue--confirming Duckett’s worst fears.

By the early ‘70s, long after Duckett had moved to New York, calls for a roof led Joel Breitbart, along with his architect colleagues in the city’s Public Works division, to draw up plans.

They won the contract. Breitbart, now retired, says their goal was “a reasonable design and cost. We weren’t concerned about acoustics. Perhaps we should have been, but our assignment was to put a roof on it. Period.”

For Welty, “when the roof was put on, it created an acoustic nightmare. Imagine a horn--the flat, non-acoustic ceiling--being pointed toward a satellite dish--the curved concrete back wall. That’s what you have there.”

The roof’s design--a tensile structure in which a cable system supports the roof in lieu of many interior columns--may be one of the building’s most architecturally distinguished features. Such a feature is among the criteria used by the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission to declare a locale worthy of preservation status.

If it won this status, the pavilion would be saved from demolition. According to architect and Coalition member Karl Smith, an application for such status is about to be sent to the commission. SPARC-supported preservation efforts for graffiti-marred murals on the pavilion site are also part of this effort.

Prominent Washington, D.C., architect John Ray Hoke Jr., who has viewed only the building’s exterior, says that “such tensile structures are very rare in America. I think it has historical value.”

But not community value, charges Hoffmann, a longtime observer of the Venice scene. Hoffmann has seen a combination of what he terms public apathy, cumbersome bureaucracy and weak government leadership turn the pavilion into “an eyesore.”

“This is an urban renewal project that has turned into urban blight. One group after another has tried to make a go of the place, and it’s always been a non-starter. Recreation and Parks has no use for it, and spending any more money on it is like throwing it down a rat hole. With the city’s precious funds at a premium, we should just cut our losses and move on.”

What Hoffmann and his allies want is a roller-skating course winding through a lighted grassy area, meeting up with the coastal bike path and surrounding two multipurpose rinks, the larger of which could be used for various sports such as roller hockey, as well as for outdoor performances. Proponents envision a portable stage and bleacher arrangement as a means of turning a sports rink into an open-air theater.

For Wright and SeaSkate members, the area should be a beach-oriented place “that would for the first time in L.A. provide skaters with a real skating area. Kids just don’t have that anywhere.”

Smith dismisses the SeaSkate model as “a school science project, not very well thought out.” Along with colleagues Welty and technician Joe Moreau, Smith has countered with a theater redesign plan that is “based on actual scale and original blueprints.” Besides turning much outdoor space over to skating, their theater proposal includes ceiling and wall acoustic baffles and sound-soaking material on the back walls, as well as a lobby, on-site restrooms and thick theatrical curtains that can serve as dividing walls between aisles for smaller seating arrangements.

Coalition activist Gary Doan, sounding like his SeaSkate opponents, says, “We have tried to take everyone’s interests into account with this plan.” Welty asserts that “this hall is ideal for TV broadcasting, not only theater or music,” stressing that the key to the pavilion’s future is interesting corporate media in its use.

Which points to the most nettlesome question of all: Razing or preserving the pavilion will cost money, but where is it coming from? According to various sources, either course will cost about $2 million, although Welty claims that the coalition’s plans will cost one-third of this figure. Beyeler guesses that among the top three neediest Venice coastal projects--the pier, boardwalk and pavilion--the pavilion could go begging since “funds are scarcer than ever, pier restoration is already under way and boardwalk improvement demands are overwhelming.”

As the renewal process wends its way through Coastal Conservancy meetings (after a highly anticipated conservancy report due in February) and city land-use planning hearings, the pavilion may die based on as basic but crucial a detail as lack of parking, which is always at a premium at Southland beaches.

Yet even as bureaucratic difficulties may be predictable, observers say to expect the unexpected. For example, developer Robert Goodfader is planning a four-story Italianate commercial and residential building, with 200 parking spaces, across from the pavilion area at Windward Avenue and the boardwalk. “If my building is approved,” says Goodfader, “then it will significantly change the area. With parking--especially with an added subterranean structure--the pavilion could be saved.

“But,” Goodfader adds cautiously, “it shouldn’t be if things aren’t done right. The pavilion can’t go on the way it is.”