Pacific Closes Curtain on Planned Multiplex : Development: Firm drops 20-screen Topanga Plaza project, which would have been surrounded by competition.

Pacific Theatres Corp. has quietly scrapped plans to build a 20-screen theater near Topanga Plaza, which would have been the largest in the San Fernando Valley.

The site of the planned theater, just south of Victory Boulevard, will be surrounded by other nearby theaters with a total of 32 screens before the end of the year, but the company gave no specific reasons for its decision.

Pacific Theatres General Manager Jay Swerdlow issued a statement saying only that the company was unable to make a satisfactory financial deal. But Amy Wood, the company’s advertising director, said competition from other theaters had “absolutely nothing to do with the decision.”

She said the company will continue to operate the Pacific Topanga, a three-screen theater across Victory Boulevard from Topanga Plaza that seats 925.

Pacific received preliminary approval from the city Planning Department in July, 1994, to build a 70,000-square-foot complex, which would have had 20 screens and 4,500 seats.

The company even initiated an appeal of a transportation fee, said city planner Larry Friedman, “and we basically never heard from them again.”

Sometime after its initial proposal, Pacific scaled back to an 18-theater plan--advertised by signs along Topanga Canyon and Victory boulevards. That would have given it the same number of screens as the Cineplex Odeon 18 Cinemas at Universal City, although the Cineplex still has more seats, with 6,000.

Then came the announcement that AMC had bought the Saks Fifth Avenue building at The Promenade mall two blocks south and was going to build a 16-screen complex of its own.

That literally surrounded the Pacific project with other movie theaters. Four blocks to the southeast is United Artists’ Warner Center six-screen theater, and one mile west in Fallbrook Mall, General Cinema has seven screens and is opening three more this Friday.

With Pacific’s 18-theater plan, Woodland Hills was on track to have 50 screens by the 1995 holiday season, and industry analysts were predicting a movie war. But the decision not to build takes Pacific out of the fight, at least for now.

For whatever reason, Pacific--the first to announce its expansion--was beaten to the punch, and has backed away from the fight.

Art Murphy, box-office analyst for The Hollywood Reporter, said that it is common for theater companies to scout out the same areas for expansion--neighborhoods that are overpopulated and underserved.

“This happens in any hot expanding population area. . . . An area like that attracts the interest of theater owners who aren’t in the area--and [those] who are in the area, who figure they better expand or perish,” he said. “There may be more theaters on the drawing board than ever get opened. The people who are ahead of schedule get the area.”

Dick Walsh, vice president of AMC’s operations in the western United States, said the company began construction about five months ago, but would have gone ahead regardless of Pacific’s decision.

“It was an area of the Valley we didn’t have a theater in . . . and we thought it was underserved,” he said. “Pacific Theatres’ decision, I think, was based on the fact that we were going to get ahead in the game.”

Friedman, the city planner in charge of Warner Center at the time, said that AMC and Pacific were trying to get their building plans approved last summer. “I would have been surprised if AMC and Pacific, being so close together, had both proceeded to build their separate projects,” he said.

There was also a shift in management at Topanga Plaza after the new theater project received city approval. In February, 1994, Westfield Corp. bought CenterMark, which manages the mall and adjacent land. In November, Westfield moved CenterMark’s offices into its own in Los Angeles and took more direct control of the development.

Randy Smith, executive vice president of marketing for Westfield, said he could not comment on specific negotiations with Pacific. But to his knowledge, he said, there was no conflict between the two companies. “All I know is that there was a projection of up to 30 screens in the immediate area and that the demand would be served,” he said.

Westfield currently is investigating other ways to develop the property.