Historic Theater Slated to Be Razed : Glendale: Site built in the 1920s, now a target for vandals, is scheduled to make way for $25-million downtown shopping center next year.
In its heyday, Glendale’s oldest theater was a hub of stage and screen entertainment, a venue founded in the era of silent films and vaudeville that thrived well into the age of talkies and Technicolor.
But today, the Glendale Theater is a dilapidated, stripped-down building frequented by vandals. City officials said Monday that the theater and several other aging buildings are tentatively slated to be razed early next year to make way for a $25-million redevelopment project.
“It probably has a lot of history, but it’s really a dump now,” said John Hedlund, who took ownership of the building by default when a previous owner defaulted on a loan five years ago. Hedlund had originally hoped to convert the building to a supper club and revival house theater, but he was unable to find investors.
The two-story, 1,400-seat brick theater at 120 S. Brand Blvd. was said to be the largest in Southern California when it opened in October, 1920. It was designed by Alfred Priest, a famed architect of Glendale’s development boom of the 1920s, had a three-chamber pipe organ, and ran a competing theater up the street out of business, according to Glendale Historical Society archives.
Several years ago, when the Glendale Redevelopment Agency began planning the project now known as the proposed Glendale Marketplace, the historical society asked city staffers to consider saving the theater and other old buildings and incorporate them into the development. But because the Glendale Theater’s architectural features had been drastically modified over time, the society instead focused its efforts on a well-preserved nearby office building, which it helped save from the wrecking ball.
“In the end, we decided not to take a stand on the theater,” said Andrea Humberger of the historical society. “Not because it’s not historically significant, but because it had been altered so much, and was so deteriorated.”
The Redevelopment Agency hopes to sign a development agreement before the end of the year with the Pasadena-based Tolkin Group, which has proposed a number of large retail stores and a multiscreen cinema.
The project is to be located between Brand Boulevard, Broadway, Harvard and Louise streets. The demolition work could begin by early 1996, and the new shopping center is expected to be built within a year, officials said.
Kirk Pelser, a project manager with the Redevelopment Agency, said officials considered reusing some of the older buildings in the new project but found most were too small or in need of too many repairs. The cost of earthquake repairs and other work needed just to make the Glendale Theater habitable again is about $750,000, officials said.
“It simply is not economically viable to say we’re going to preserve every building on that block,” Pelser said.
