Vintage Theater Back in Limelight

A group of local and out-of-town investors is looking at purchasing the long-shuttered Mayfair Theater and converting it into a performing arts center.

“We would envision everything from plays to musical performances to stand-up comics,” said former City Council candidate Doug Halter, who is heading the movement to renovate the building. “We hope it could be like the Civic Light Opera in Santa Barbara.”

On off nights, Halter said, the theater could show international films.

The pink Art Deco building is at Santa Clara and Ash streets downtown.

Halter, who has renovated numerous historic buildings in Ventura and heads the Downtown Community Council, dreams of bringing the theater back to life.

Over the past two months, he has walked City Council members, Los Angeles theater designers, lighting technicians, historians and possible investors through the theater in an effort to drum up interest.

Potential investors include a philanthropic foundation that supports the arts.

On Tuesday, Wayne Llewellyn, a technician from the Hollywood-based Nights of Neon, peered at the whorls of the marquee--now filled with nesting birds--to see what it would take to light it up.

“They don’t make stuff like this any more,” Llewellyn said.

“The buildings we work on now are just slapped up.

“But it’s going to take a lot,” he added.

The Mayfair was designed by S. Charles Lee, referred to in “The National Trust Guide to Art-Deco America” as the foremost architect of Art Deco and “streamline moderne” theaters in the country.

The other Art Deco edifice in downtown Ventura was the Jack Rose building, which was torn down last spring to make way for the Century theater complex on the 500 block of Main Street.

The Mayfair opened in 1941.

“Opening night they showed [the film] ‘Irene,’ ” said 75-year-old Barbara Dodge Gill, whose mother conceived and ran the theater. “It was invitation only. There were long dresses, lights on Santa Clara Street. It was a big deal. Desi and Lucy Arnez were there. Desi chipped his tooth on the microphone. My mother thought he was going to sue.”

In the ‘70s, the Mayfair was reincarnated as the Pussy Cat Theater, showing X-rated movies.

In the early 1990s, some locals tried to run it as a coffeehouse that showed art movies. That effort failed too.

Today it sits empty. Pigeons flutter inside the theater, and the textured gold and red wallpaper in the lobby is peeling.

Only the stylish gold light fixtures remain untarnished, hinting at the theater’s previous style.

Earlier this year, Halter took the theater up as a cause.

“It is a fantastic building,” Halter said. “We are just seeing too many buildings in this city torn down because no one tries to save them.”

Those involved in negotiations emphasized that plans are still preliminary.

Halter said restoring the theater, which is on the market for $510,000, would take a minimum of $500,000.

That would include refurbishing the theater, enlarging the stage and perhaps building box seats along the side. The number of seats would probably be reduced from its current 750 to 500, Halter said.

Some also worry Ventura does not yet have the audiences to fill such a venue.

“In the sense of the ‘Field of Dreams,’ ” said Ed Summers, who heads the city’s Cultural Affairs Commission task force, “the question is, ‘If we do it, who is going to come?’ ”

But Karyl Lynn Burns, executive director of the Ventura Chamber Music Festival, said Ventura has the audiences to fill the hall.

According to a 1996-97 grant application for the Santa Barbara Civic Light Opera, 39% of its annual audience of 100,000 comes from west Ventura County. That figure is estimated to be closer to 50% this year, she said.

City staff members may recommend the Mayfair be turned into a performing arts center when they present a package of proposals about the city’s cultural district to the City Council this fall.

But Halter stressed the city would not own the building, and that if it chooses to get involved, it would only be in terms of providing money to get programming off the ground.

Even dilapidated and closed, the bold curves of the building somehow manage to capture the fancy of those who drive and walk past it every day.

“I would be so excited to see it in use, with its original flare,” said Lisa Lauterbach, who attended the Mayfair Theater as a child and has researched the building for the San Buenaventura Historic Alliance.

“It’s so nice compared to that big thing they are building up the street. It’s good for people to be able to introduce their kids to theaters like that, so they don’t think all there is are multiplexes.”

Added Gill, who saw the theater in its heyday: “It was absolutely the classiest building in the whole area when it was new.”