New Berkeley housing project would replace beloved theater
The housing crisis has spurred a lot of new state laws, many of them designed to force communities to build more homes. For decades, Berkeley stood in the way of building more housing and now they're paying a price for it.
With the law removing most local control, residents are just beginning to see what could be lost when they have no say in what's built or what's demolished.
In 1919, silent film stars Charlie Chaplain and Mary Pickford made history when they founded United Artists, a movie studio that set out across California building its own theaters. The one on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley opened in September of 1932 at a cost of $300,000, and was considered the most luxurious venue in a city that had become an entertainment mecca in the Bay Area.
It could hold 1, 800 people, and its grand lobby, staircases and wall-sized frescos reflected an art deco style popular in the opulent cinema palaces of the day.
"The farther back you go, the more grand and intricate it became," said Greg King, a member of the Theater Historical Society.
Over the years the UA Theatre screened some of the most popular films in history, but in the 1970s the multi-plex craze took over and the cinema was divided into two, four, five and finally seven screens.
But rather than just gutting the building, the owners partitioned the cavernous theater, preserving the gold painted walls and ceiling, which can still be viewed by accessing a trap door.
King got a chance to see it in 2016.
"We were able to gain access to the unseen portions of the building," he said. "It's fully there, all above the upstairs theaters where there's a lowered ceiling, and it's completely preserved all in gold and silver leaf and full of indirect lighting and grill work. And it's basically just been hidden away and preserved for all these years."
But In 2022, the building's owner, Regal, sold the theater to a development company called Panoramic Interests, which will preserve only the art deco facade out front as the entrance to a massive new 17-story housing project, featuring 299 homes including studios and 4 and 5-bedroom units. The rest of the magnificent old theater will be demolished.
"I'm brokenhearted," said Rose Ellis. "Berkeley is becoming something that I don't recognize anymore. Although I desperately want people to have affordable housing, if this building leaves, I don't know what Berkeley represents anymore."
Ellis founded a group that is trying to stop the demolition but even they are feeling pretty hopeless. The project is subject to new state mandates that pressure cities to create more housing while making them forfeit local control.
"These new housing laws are overreaching in a very narrow aspect, in preserving very, very important historical resources like the United Artists," said Ellis. "So, we're asking the city and the state and people to realize that there has to be at least one exception."
The residents would like to see the building preserved as a multi-use film and performing arts venue.
"I grew up in Berkeley. I went to this theater," said Spreck Rosekrans. "It was by far, in the 60s, the most spectacular theater in Berkeley. It's probably the most precious building in the entire city. It would be a shame to tear it down. It could be the jewel of downtown."
But on Thursday night, the proposal will go to the Zoning Adjustments Board which has little choice under the law but to approve it. The residents said city planners blew it by not fully considering the theater's historic status when they proclaimed the project to be exempt from CEQA protection.
"I think a very strong case was that it is a historic resource under the law. I feel like they're just ignoring these fundamental facts," said Laura Linden. "We don't understand how this exemption was granted. The exemption just, basically, puts it on a glide path to approval, and this theater to be destroyed."
The state is seeing to it that the housing shortage is no longer ignored. And because of it, the theater's fate may already be sealed, and Berkeley may soon lose another beautiful piece of its history.
"There are a thousand places they could build the high-rise," said Rosekrans. "But if this theater is gone, it's gone forever and it'll be a real loss for the city."