Bringing Back the Glory Days
Culver City still proclaims itself the “Heart of Screenland,” because the town was favored by early filmmakers for location shoots and speak-easies. And the Westside community remains home to Sony Pictures on what was the fabled Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot.
Yet the lack of movie screens, and the consumers they bring to a shopping district, is killing the city’s downtown businesses, locals say.
Until two months ago, American Movie Corp. was supposed to build a 3,000-seat, 20-screen theater complex that would have been the anchor of a long-awaited entertainment and shopping complex on three blocks of Washington and Culver boulevards now used as parking lots, near the Culver Hotel flatiron building.
Like a kinder, gentler version of the Third Street Promenade in nearby Santa Monica, the proposed $60-million Town Plaza project was expected to draw visitors from all over the Westside and even to snag some tourists. It would have crowned a decade of civic efforts to give Culver City a lively center.
But then the bottom fell out in the movie theater industry, the result of the construction of too many screens in Southern California. Several major chains fell into bankruptcy. Looking to avoid a similar fate, AMC officials pulled out of the Culver City plan, city officials said.
Now, developers and city officials are negotiating with another, unidentified movie chain for a theater half the size of the one originally planned and promise to rescue the Town Plaza. But some downtown business owners worry that they can’t hang on much longer.
“It has to happen,” said Rob Barber, owner of Stellar Hardware, a fixture in Culver City’s downtown for about 70 years. “Because if it doesn’t, they’re going to have a ghost town.”
There is one six-screen theater at the south end of downtown on Washington Boulevard, but it doesn’t bring in enough business to feed the local eateries.
Restaurants and merchants along Washington say they scrape by on the heavy lunch-hour crowds from nearby Sony Pictures. With a looming threat of entertainment industry strikes this summer, however, many are worried.
Other retailers, who have survived the encroachment of large discount stores nearby such as Best Buy and Home Depot, suffer because most locals don’t have a reason to be downtown after dark. Most of them go to Santa Monica, Hollywood or Marina del Rey for after-hours entertainment.
“People who live in Culver City don’t seem to go out in Culver City,” said Alex Russell, manager of the downtown restaurant the Sagebrush Cantina. “There’s nothing here.”
But longtime residents of the community of 45,000 say downtown Culver City looks far better than it did 15 years ago. Then, Washington and Culver boulevards were lined with shabby car repair shops and graffiti-scarred storefronts.
“Back then, it was pretty sleazy, rundown and worn out,” mayor and 30-year Culver City resident David Hauptman said. “People are looking at us now and saying, ‘You’re really cutting-edge.’ ”
During the last 10 years, millions of dollars have been poured into revitalizing downtown by adding two parking garages, upgraded storefronts and cafe-friendly sidewalks featuring street lamps and trees.
Newly renovated and accepting guests is the historic Culver Hotel, which rises six stories at the triangular intersection of Culver and West Washington boulevards. The flatiron-shaped building, dating from 1924, was a haven for celebrities when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios stood on the downtown site now occupied by Sony Pictures. Among the guests were Greta Garbo, John Wayne and, during the “Wizard of Oz” shoot, the actors who played the Munchkins.
The nearby Ivy Substation, which supplied power to the old Red Car line, is now a community performance hall. There’s a new City Hall, a renovated police station, a new fire station and a reconfigured Washington-Culver intersection to ease traffic.
Still, the large crowds haven’t come.
“You can have the prettiest looking place,” said George Plato, president of the city’s downtown business association. “But if you don’t have something for people to come to, it’s going to die.”
Further delaying the Town Plaza project was a citizen-led initiative called Measure M, which qualified for the April ballot.
A group of homeowners designed the measure to block Town Plaza from being built so close to Lynwood E. Howe Elementary School at Irving Place. They said it would bring traffic congestion too close to schoolchildren.
The measure, also known as the “Safe Schools Initiative,” was soundly defeated, but the campaign delayed the Town Plaza during a crucial year as the AMC chain got cold feet, city officials complained.
Karl Manheim, a Loyola Marymount University law professor and former land use attorney, was a main proponent of Measure M. The 17-year Culver City resident said Town Plaza, as originally planned, would have clogged downtown’s already congested streets.
The Culver City Redevelopment Agency, like many municipal redevelopment agencies throughout the state, is funded by local property taxes. Culver City’s agency has agreed to contribute $20 million toward the Town Plaza project, which is being built on city-owned land.
“It was a gift of public funds for corporate purposes,” Manheim said.
City planners say future sales taxes and other revenue generated by the project would more than repay the municipal investment. Meanwhile, redevelopment agency deputy director Mark Wardlaw promised to announce a new theater tenant this month.
“We’re in active negotiations,” he said.
Since AMC pulled out, city planners have revised the original plans to include a 1,600-seat theater, plus room for restaurants and offices around a small plaza, a specialty grocery store and a city-owned, 800-space parking garage. The complex is designed to be easily accessible on foot.
Architecturally, the project will “feel like it’s always been there,” with designs that complement Culver City’s 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s architecture, said Paul Buss, executive vice president of San Diego-based DDR/OliverMcMillan, which signed on five years ago to develop the project.
If a movie theater isn’t landed, then officials say they will have to go back to the drawing table for some other, unspecified type of entertainment magnet.
But they stress that they are optimistic that talks with the new movie chain will be successful and that workers will break ground in November for a planned October 2002 opening.
“It’s going to be a beautiful project,” hardware store owner Barber said. “If it’s ever built.”
