Grand to Close, Then Reopen as Big-Band Venue : Stage: The Anaheim dinner theater, which has been unprofitable for the past two years, will shut its doors in February.

The Grand Dinner Theatre, which has been in an economic decline for the past two years, plans to shut its doors as Orange County’s only union-professional dinner theater in February and reopen as a dance hall.

“We’re going to switch the room over to a big-band format,” Russ Cox, general manager of the Grand Hotel, where the 400-seat venue has operated since 1977, said Friday. “We think there’s a market for that, which will be more profitable than the theater.”

Theater administrator Joan Serot said the Grand’s current musical, “Camelot,” will close Feb. 2, two weeks earlier than scheduled. The venue will reopen Feb. 14 with a 17-piece orchestra on stage and a new dance floor but no other major renovations, she said.

According to staff producer William Lockwood, the theatrical operation had earned “a large profit for more than a decade and covered some of the hotel’s losses in other areas” but had become unprofitable in the past two years.

Cox confirmed that the theater had been operating in the red in recent years. He declined to say what its losses came to. But Lockwood, who also declined to cite a precise figure, said the losses amounted to “slightly more than $200,000 over 1990 and 1991.”

Grand Hotel Associates, which has owned the 242-room hotel for 18 of its 25 years, put the property up for sale in 1990 for a reported $28 million. Cox said the property is still for sale, although it was reportedly taken off the market in May after the Walt Disney Co. revealed long-range expansion plans for Disneyland that would include a parking structure on the hotel site.

About 15 people will lose their jobs with the closing of the dinner theater, among them Serot, Lockwood and their ticket-sales staff. The hotel will find new jobs for some of them, Cox said.

Lockwood said the dinner theater opened April 12, 1977, under the management of Sebastian’s, the first dinner theater operator in California, after several unsuccessful attempts at Las Vegas-style revues. The theater, called Sebastian’s at the Grand, produced “Hello, Dolly!” as its first musical. Big hits that followed were “Three Goats in a Blanket” with Mickey Rooney in 1978 and “Barefoot in the Park” with Dorothy Lamour in 1980, Lockwood said.

In 1981, the theater’s management changed hands and with it the name of the venue. The new manager, Frank Wyka, operated the Grand Dinner Theatre for 12 years. He was let go by the hotel owners in October, 1990, and died in June, 1991.

Among the hit shows that Wyka produced were the dinner-theater world premieres of “Annie” in 1983, “A Chorus Line” in 1985 and “42nd Street” in 1987.

Serot cited “the lack of new material coming from Broadway and the high cost of operating” for the decline of the Grand Dinner Theatre.

The new dance hall does not have a name. Serot said she will suggest “Big Band at the Grand.”