Panel’s Review to Delay Start of El Portal Renovations : North Hollywood: Plans to stage live performances are postponed so that a new citizens committee can study the already funded redevelopment project.

The controversial rebirth of the venerable El Portal, which would give the San Fernando Valley its first major live theater facility since 1966, has been stalled and could be in further trouble.

In December, the Community Redevelopment Agency approved a $250,000 funding package for renovations to the now-dark El Portal in North Hollywood, but now it says the matter will not go on to the Los Angeles City Council for final ratification until at least mid-February.

CRA officials said the delay is to allow its newly revived citizens advisory committee to review the project, even though the funding already has been approved.

“As long as we have the committee, now, we thought they should review it,” said Jerry Belcher, project manager for the CRA in North Hollywood.

He announced the agency’s decision Tuesday night at the first meeting of the re-formed committee, called the Project Area Committee or PAC, whose members were chosen in a special public election in October.

The delay will leave Actors Alley, the theater troupe that has spearheaded the drive to put live theater into the El Portal, at least temporarily without a home for the first time in its 21 years of producing plays in the Valley. The troupe was planning to begin producing plays in the Art Deco theater in April when the lease on its current 99-seat space in North Hollywood expires without chance of renewal.

But before Actors Alley can move, the now-dowdy El Portal will need a minimum of two months of renovations. That means Actors Alley will have to close its current subscription season for at least a month.

“We think we just got caught in the political process,” said a disappointed Robert Caine, managing director of Actors Alley. “We’ll just have to deal with a gap in our schedule and hope that our subscribers will be understanding.

“I’m sure it will eventually all get approved and we will move in.”

But there is strong opposition to the project by some members of the Project Area Committee.

“We think there are a lot better ways to spend government money in this day and age,” said Mildred Weller, a member of the committee and longtime opponent of many CRA programs in the area. “At a time when teachers are planning to strike and there is not enough money for the Fire Department, I can’t see spending money on a theater.”

The committee is only advisory and Weller’s supporters are generally thought to be in the minority of the 24-member group. But the delay will give the opposition a chance to gain ground before the matter goes before the City Council. One mayoral candidate, Julian Nava, has already spoken out against CRA funding of the theater.

“Why are we funding theater when people don’t even feel safe to go out at night?” Nava told a small group of supporters at a rally in front of the El Portal on Lankershim Boulevard last month. Weller said Wednesday that Nava has agreed to argue the matter before the City Council when it goes there for final ratification.

According to its lawyers, the CRA was not required to take the matter to the committee. The agency avoided doing so before it took a vote on the funding because at the time, the newly elected committee had not yet met.

But CRA officials decided that leaving the committee out of the process might cause more problems than including it, Caine said.

“The CRA people discussed it with us last week and said a decision had been made to go ahead and let the committee get in on it,” Caine said. “They thought that everything would certainly be smoother and go more nicely if we went through the PAC.”

Caine, who owns a local collection agency and works for the theater as a volunteer, was obviously disappointed with the delay but said he remains optimistic.

“The delay is not going to help us, but it’s not going to kill us, either,” he said. “Running a theater is a tough business. This is not going to be the worst thing we will have to go through.”

Actors Alley’s move to its planned 199-seat house in the El Portal would be a major change economically. Theaters with less than 100 seats get a major break from the Actors Equity union, which lets them pay actors at far less than minimum scale.

Theaters with more than 99 seats are so much more expensive to operate that only a handful exist in Los Angeles. Although numerous attempts have been made in recent years to begin one in the Valley--including an infamous attempt at the El Portal in 1991 that ended with the conviction of its creator on fraud charges--none has come to fruition.

The last full Equity theater in the Valley was the theater-in-the-round Valley Music Center, which is now a Jehovah’s Witnesses church.