Newport to Buy Balboa Theatre
Saying a revitalized Balboa Theatre would help bring new life to the Balboa Peninsula, members of the Newport Beach City Council voted unanimously Monday to buy the 71-year-old venue.
The city plans to use $480,000 in leftover Community Development Block Grant money to pay for the theater.
“Everybody’s worked really hard to get to this point,” Councilman John Hedges said. “But it hardly means this is over.”
The city still must reach a lease agreement with the Balboa Performing Arts Theatre Foundation to renovate and operate the venue, which members say could be reopened within a year.
Lido Isle resident John Wortmann, president of CJW Corp., which bought the theater in 1995, told city officials he and his partners--his brother and sister--support the city’s purchase. The reason they bought the Balboa in the first place, he said, was to help rehabilitate and reopen it. Getting the city involved now seems the best way to accomplish that, he said.
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