Santa Paula Is Ticketed for a Theater : Entertainment: The seven-screen complex could open by Thanksgiving--to the joy of town’s teen-agers.

Sixteen-year-old Elisa Perez of Santa Paula never has anywhere to go on Friday nights.

The Santa Paula High School junior doesn’t own a car and often can’t get to teen-age nightspots in Oxnard or Ventura. She complains there is little to do for young people in her hometown.

“Right now, we’re really stuck,” Elisa said. “We don’t even have a bowling alley.”

But things might change by the end of the year.

Los Angeles developers are planning to open a $3-million theater complex along West Main Street by Thanksgiving--the beginning of the six-week holiday movie-going season that is second only to summer in gross receipts.

“It’ll be more fun having a movie theater in Santa Paula,” Elisa said Wednesday, one day after the Planning Commission unanimously approved the sprawling multiplex.

“We won’t be able to complain that there’s nothing to do anymore,” she said. “We can spend more time with our friends and it will be somewhere for teen-agers to hang out.”

The 16,000-square-foot movie house is planned for the site of the old Santa Paula Bowl, which closed last year for lack of business and was demolished last month.

The new center calls for seven movie screens in an L-shaped complex, with patio dining and retail shops planned nearby.

“We’re real excited about the whole project,” said Brett Havlik, general manager of Wallace Theater Corp., the Honolulu-based company that will operate the multiplex.

“It’s a great location because the town needs a theater,” he said. “We have very high expectations.”

If all goes as planned, the Santa Paula complex will be the second multiplex theater to open in Ventura County this year. Construction began last month on a 12-screen theater complex in Camarillo.

Three years ago, Santa Paula conducted a survey asking residents what types of services they most wanted for the city.

“There were a number of activities listed and (a theater) was at the top of the list,” Planning Commissioner Shirley D. Hara said. “It’s a great form of entertainment and it brings increased revenue into Santa Paula.

“It will also bring jobs, and any type of jobs we can bring into this community are needed,” she said.

Havlik said the movie house represents between 20 and 30 new jobs for Santa Paula residents. All but a handful would be part-time positions, he said.

The president of the Santa Paula Chamber of Commerce welcomed the theaters as another entertainment alternative for the city’s young people.

“I have two teen-age daughters and there’s not a lot for them to do, so this will really help,” said Peggy Jensen, who owns Casa de Flores flower shop.

The multiplex theater also will help keep entertainment dollars local, Jensen said.

“When I take my family to the movies, we’ll spend $50 or more,” she said. “This will keep the money in Santa Paula.”

Arthur Pearlman, a partner in the Los Angeles firm planning the development, said the cinemas will be accompanied by an ice-cream parlor, a sandwich shop and other retail stores.

A Thrifty drugstore and a Vons supermarket already have opened in the nearby Santa Paula Shopping Center.

“We’ve expanded the entire center, and we have aggressively gone out and met with the theater operators,” Pearlman said. “Now, when ‘Superman 14’ opens in Beverly Hills, it’ll be shown in Santa Paula at the same time.”

Eighteen-year-old Evy Hernandez, a Santa Paula High School graduate who works at McDonald’s, said many of the young people in town get into trouble because there is so little to keep them occupied.

“There’s a lot of graffiti-writing because the teen-agers need something more to do,” she said. “So having a theater will be good.

“I usually just rent movies, but I’ll probably go once or twice a week.”