A LOOK AHEAD * A plan to modify the interior of a Hollywood landmark and build shops, restaurants, a parking garage and health club around it has film and architecture buffs . . . Fighting to Preserve the Cinerama Dome

Devotees extol it as a Los Angeles legend and Hollywood icon. They’ve written dozens of passionate letters urging the city to give it landmark protection and fiercely protested plans to gut its interior for a contemporary make-over.

A 1920s movie palace? A vintage studio building?

No, it is the Cinerama Dome, a concrete geodesic dome bordered by parking lots, that is stirring these emotions. Erected at a furious pace in 1963 for the opening of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” the Sunset Boulevard movie house is at the center of a preservation battle.

Film buffs and champions of ‘60s architecture have cried sacrilege at plans to renovate the interior and develop a retail-entertainment complex around the dome.

“I don’t think [the owners] really understand the visceral response,” said Doug Haines, a motion picture editor and member of a group called Friends of Cinerama. “They don’t understand the emotions involved in this issue.”

After months of being pelted with verbal tomatoes, they probably do. Pacific Theatres, the company that built the dome and now wants to develop the land around it, has modified the project to answer complaints. But dome lovers are still not happy.

“We’re defending the last of an era,” preservationist Robert Nudelman emphasized at a recent meeting of the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission, which is considering whether to declare the theater a city historic-cultural monument.

Indeed, the dome is not just the last, it’s the one and only.

The 937-seat theater was to be the first of hundreds of domed movie houses built across the country to show films in Cinerama. But the wide-screen Cinerama process was soon eclipsed by other formats, and the Sunset Boulevard theater remains the sole example of its kind.

It is also said to be the only geodesic dome in the world made entirely of concrete. Built by crews working around the clock on the site of a former gas station, it consists of 316 interlocking, precast panels.

Inside, a huge, curved screen was installed for the three-reel Cinerama projection system, which was designed to give audiences the sensation of being surrounded by film action. Ironically, the dome has never shown a movie in full Cinerama, and the full screen is seldom used.

But even the partial screen dwarfs the shrunken images seen in today’s shoebox-sized multiplexes, making the dome popular with exhibitors and audiences in search of the Big Picture.

“I beg you not to mess with it,” wrote a loyal fan in one of about 70 letters sent to the heritage commission--among the most ever received by the panel on a landmark nomination. “Having attended a screening there just this past weekend, I can tell you that any change to its magnificent screen . . . will not be an improvement; it will in fact be a tragedy.”

Similar sentiments were expressed in letters from film critic Richard Schickel, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Art Directors, the Motion Picture Editors Guild, American Cinema Editors and several film historians.

Pacific intends to completely redo the dome’s interior. The company wants to get rid of the curved screen, which it says distorts today’s films, and replace it with a large flat one. It wants to rip out the seats and replace them with stadium seating, which allow for better views. And it wants to knock down inside walls to open the interior to the dome’s circular pattern.

Although the company has altered some development plans in response to complaints that the dome would be smothered by the proposed complex, Pacific representatives were adamant in interviews and remarks to the commission that they have to renovate the interior to stay competitive.

“Keeping the screen just doesn’t make sense to our people who are experts in projection,” said Neil Haltrecht, vice president of Pacific real estate and development. When “Evita” ran at the dome in an exclusive showing, Haltrecht said, the director demanded that a flat screen and a false ceiling be temporarily installed to improve the sound and image.

Pacific does not object to giving the exterior of the dome and its marquee landmark protection, Haltrecht told the commission. But the company opposes inclusion of the dome’s interior. “We are unable to preserve the entire theater,” he argued. “It is critical that we be able to make changes to the theater.”

Even if the entire dome is declared a landmark, Pacific would be able to do as it pleased after a year because that is the longest the city can block demolition or major alteration of a building under the landmark ordinance.

In addition to revamping the dome, Pacific wants to build stores and restaurants, a new multiplex theater, a large health club and a seven- to nine-story parking garage on the site, which is bordered by Sunset Boulevard, Vine Street and De Longpre and Ivar avenues.

The company, which is negotiating with the city Community Redevelopment Agency for an undisclosed amount of financial help, hopes to break ground on the $70-million project in September.

Pacific has always had plans to develop the land next to the dome. Originally an office building was to be constructed next to it. More recently, Haltrecht said the company was considering demolishing the dome and building high-rises on the six-acre site.

By the time the project was announced last year, it had evolved into a smaller-scaled retail-entertainment complex that retained the dome but replaced its large front marquee with a strip of single-story shops in front of the theater.

That, combined with the rest of the new development, “would, in effect, turn the Cinerama Dome into the Pacific Theatre Lump,” Nudelman, a member of the preservationist group Hollywood Heritage, groused in a letter to the redevelopment agency.

Pacific has since eliminated plans for stores in front of the dome, maintaining the marquee and an unobstructed front view of the dome. The company has also tinkered with the design of the new complex, which would rise behind the dome and on its western flank. An Art Deco theme has been dropped in favor of a ‘60s-flavored design more harmonious with the dome.

“These were scary plans,” Los Angeles Conservancy Executive Director Linda Dishman said of the original proposal. “It was very much a plastic, oppressive design that just sort of encompassed the whole dome.

“To Pacific Theatres’ credit,” she said, “they’ve listened to the discussion about that and came back with a dramatically improved project that I think really does respect the dome itself in keeping visual access to the front, and keeping the marquee of the project.”

Still, Dishman says of the interior: “Removing everything is not historic preservation.”