The California Theatre got an early, grim 90th birthday present Tuesday when the City Council unanimously approved its demolition in favor of a 40-story residential tower.

The 2,200-seat theater and its nine-story office tower at Fourth Avenue and C Street closed in 1990 and had been bought and sold numerous times with plans that went nowhere to either restore or redevelopment the property.

Preservationists made a last-ditch effort to save what had been called “magnificent” on opening day, but their pleas fell on deaf ears, as project supporters said the dilapidated structure must give way to the new and lead a revitalization for the failing C Street corridor. The theater opened on April 22, 1927, the largest movie palace at the time in San Diego.

“There’s a lot of opportunity here,” said Councilman Chris Ward, who represents downtown. “We certainly have in the downtown community been waiting for something transformative to C Street.”


Bruce Coons, executive director of the Save Our Heritage Organisation, faulted feasibility studies for underestimating the building’s potential and said several local investors and developers had pledged to buy and preserve the theater, either as a performance venue or an adaptive reuse. He and other speakers condemned the present owners for letting the property deteriorate through lack of maintenance.

“If you approve this project, you’ll be rewarding developers for demolishing the project by neglect,” he said. “They don’t care that it’s really gone down hill and the current condition is because of the current ownership.”

Cyrus Sanandaji, representing the Beverly Hills-based ownership group, Sloan Capital Partners, said since the owners took over in 2006, they have entertained numerous proposals and they all faced the same issues.

“The building was already compromised and ridden with asbestos and lead,” he said.


Due to continuous vandalism, the building was boarded up and a chain-link fence erected around the base. The property is so far gone that owners say they cannot allow the public to get a look inside.

The new project, called Overture!, would rise 422 feet and 40 stories high and contain 282 apartments or condo units, 11,000 square feet of retail space and 325 parking spaces in a reconstruction of the office building. The original marquee and corner blade sign will be restored and reinstalled and an art installation on the C Street side will depict highlights of the building’s history.

“Overture! in the 21 century will be the cultural driver of architecture that makes cities great,” said project architect Joseph Martinez said.

He said the rooftop will include an observation deck and club lounge and stand as a “beacon,” a “new lighthouse” for C Street. That only change in the design dictated by the council was the removal of the building’s name at the top of the structure in keeping with downtown signage policy that residential towers not be marked by rooftop signs.


The California Theatre is seen in the background in this 2014 photo as pedestrians on Fourth Avenue cross C Street. (Charlie Neuman / UT San Diego/Zuma Press)

Project spokesman Jim Bartell said demolition will take about six months with construction starting early next year for an opening by late 2019 or 2020. The estimated cost is $120 million. The developers have not decided if the units will be rented or sold, but the 22 affordable units would remain as rentals for 55 years.

Some opponents argued that the 1962-63 Caliente racetrack advertising signs on the building add further to the building’s historic character, representative as they are of Tijuana’s role as a border entertainment zone dating back to the 1920s and ‘30s.

But Councilman Scott Sherman said after being closed for more than 25 years, the building has become a “dilapidated rat-trap” and is “ready to come down.”


“Eventually you have to find better use of the property and let other historic issues for future generations be created,” he said.

Erik Hanson said the building’s owner, A.W. Coggeshall who died in 1987 and had left the building to several charities, was in the demolition business.

“He could have demolished the building if he’d wanted to,” he said.

The California, designed by John Paxton Perrine and built by West Coast Theatres and local businessman C.S. Judson, opened a year before talkies began replacing silent movies and live acts and orchestras were part of the playbill. The theater sported a Wurlitzer organ and elaborate decoration in the Spanish Colonial revival style. Vaudeville acts stopped in 1937 and first-run movies were screened into the 1960s. But Mann Theatres ended regular movie runs in 1976 and the Old Globe Theatre used the facility in 1978-79 after its Balboa Park theater succumbed to arson. The San Diego Repertory Theatre and other companies also used the house briefly.


Live concerts and other popular acts and special events took place in the 1980s, but building tenants were evicted in 1990 and a string of developers came forward with plans for a multiplex theater or mixed use in the existing building. The council cleared the way for demolition in 1990 to make way for a commercial office tower that was never built.

With the demise of the California, downtown will be left with three movie palaces: the 1912 Spreckels, 1924 Balboa, and 1929 Fox, which is the San Diego Symphony’s home within Symphony Towers.

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roger.showley@sduniontribune.com; (619) 293-1286; Twitter: @rogershowley