S.F.’s Opera Plaza Cinema may be going dark



Keep clicking for San Francisco's oldest businesses. The sign for Opera Plaza Cinema, hidden behind a tree on Van Ness.

Keep clicking for San Francisco's oldest businesses. The sign for Opera Plaza Cinema, hidden behind a tree on Van Ness. Photo: Sam Whiting Photo: Sam Whiting Image 1 of / 39 Caption Close S.F.’s Opera Plaza Cinema may be going dark 1 / 39 Back to Gallery

The Opera Plaza Cinema, a cozy four-screen movie theater known for its independent and documentary programming, appears headed for closure.

Opera Plaza LP, owner of the commercial property at the 13-story condo tower in the Civic Center, has filed a request with the city to convert the ground-floor space from a movie theater to 6,000 square feet of retail sales and service.

“Opera Plaza Cinema is no longer economically viable — and has not been for a long period of time,” said Nathan Nishiguchi of Urban Pacific Properties, managing agent for Opera Plaza. “The operator (Landmark Theatres) and the landlord have arrived at the decision that closing the theater is the most appropriate next step.”

The application, filed in late July with the planning department, will require city approval to alter the conditional use permit. This entails public hearings and a possible vote by the Board of Supervisors.

But Ted Mundorff, president of Landmark, a Los Angeles chain that runs the cinema, wrote in an email that he had met with the landlord this week and was under the impression that negotiations were ongoing.

“The landlord is exploring all options for the space including us remaining a tenant,” he said. “Nothing has been decided at this time.”

Landmark does not comment on its lease arrangements, but in an email statement, property manager Nishiguchi said the cinema has been on a month-to-month lease for eight years. In lieu of traditional rent, profits are shared, he said, but there is not enough to make it worthwhile. The screening rooms, which range from 35 seats to 140 seats, have not been refurbished since the 1980s.

The plan was first reported July 28 in the online real estate tip sheet socketsite.com. It has not, as yet, stirred up a fuss. Supervisor London Breed, who represents the Civic Center, was not aware of it: “Our office has not heard from anyone regarding this issue,” she said.

The theater is part of a pioneering mixed-use project completed in 1982 that was conveniently located near the foot of the Franklin Street off-ramp for the Central Freeway, now gone. The complex covers a square block between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street, Golden Gate Avenue and Turk Street, a short walk from the War Memorial Opera House it is named for.

The movie theater was built by Allen Michaan of Renaissance Rialto Inc. and opened in November, 1984. The idea was that the theater would draw in foot traffic to the Opera Plaza retail and restaurant cluster. But there were obstacles, starting with the theater’s location at the back of a dark courtyard, where it cannot be seen from the street in any direction.

The address is listed as 601 Van Ness Ave., but the only indicator there is a hand-painted sign, hidden behind a tree, that does not list what movies are showing. The next obstacle is a circular fountain, which has always been a barrier to entry, according to Deidra O’Merde, who has operated Rose Bowl florist in Opera Plaza since 1982.

“Nobody gets past the fountain,” says O’Merde, and anybody who did still had to circumvent a bank of elevators serving the 450 condos in the tower. This has been a problem for restaurants too — hence the failure of Monsoon and Modesto Lanzone’s, which has become office space. O’Merde suspects this will eventually be the fate of Opera Plaza Cinema, because no retail seems to succeed at the back of the complex.

“There were exciting restaurants and exciting shops, but nobody could find” them, she said.

For a while, the hidden location was an asset. When Landmark took over the cinema in 1991, its ads stated “in the screening rooms” as code for indie and foreign movies the cognoscenti would be willing to search out. Or if a picture got legs in a larger house, it would land there on an open-ended run.

“When a film finished doing well at the Bridge or the Clay, we would move it over to the Opera Plaza,” said Gary Meyer, a co-founder of Landmark and now a consultant to film festivals and art-house cinemas. “People knew that if they missed it on the first run, this is where they could find it.”

Landmark has since had ownership changes and now operates the Opera Plaza as a first-run house. But it still favors minor pictures. The current listings are “Maurice,” “Lost in Paris,” “Marie Curie: The Courage of Knowledge,” and “Unforgiven.”

If Opera Plaza closes, Landmark Theatres, which was once a major force for art-house and foreign cinema, will be reduced to just the Embarcadero Center Cinema and the Clay in San Francisco.

Chronicle staff writer Leah Garchik contributed to this report. Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com Instagram: @sfchronicle_art