Church’s exit offers hope for old theater
It may be too early to plug in the projector, but there’s hope on Ocean Avenue that the historic El Rey Theatre could soon be ready for a sequel.
After occupying the El Rey for 39 years, A Place for Jesus, a Pentecostal church, has vacated the building, bolstering a longtime neighborhood dream that the neglected icon could be reborn as a community arts center or theater.
This week the San Francisco Historic Preservation Commission voted to initiate the designation of the 1931 movie palace as a city landmark, a six-month process that will make it eligible for state and federal tax credits and other incentives.
While the Streamline Moderne theater has long been a shoo-in for landmark status, California law stipulates that a building serving as a church cannot be designated as historic unless the church agrees to the designation, which A Place for Jesus never did. The theater is now owned by two Marin investment groups.
The news comes as Ocean Avenue has attracted a wave of investment over the past five years, including a Whole Foods and four new apartment complexes totaling more than 300 units. Yet stretches of the retail thoroughfare have languished, especially on the western end of the strip where El Rey is located.
“A restored and active El Rey is really the final piece needed for Ocean Avenue’s revitalization,” said Alexander Mullaney, a neighborhood resident who publishes the Ingleside-Excelsior Light newspaper and had worked for the theater’s preservation. “I don’t want to speak too soon, but it feels that everything’s on track to make that happen.”
Opened in 1931, the 1,800-seat El Rey was designed by Timothy Pflueger, whose firm was behind landmarks such as the Castro
Theatre, the Paramount Theatre in Oakland and the Pacific Telephone Building at 140 New Montgomery St. in San Francisco. A Chronicle account of its opening described the El Rey’s Spanish Colonial Revival style as “richly decorative,” with a “gallery of mirrors” adorning the lobby.
For decades the theater’s tower — visible from Mount Davidson to Merced Heights — provided a beacon in the often fogbound neighborhoods of Ingleside Terraces, Mount Davidson Manor and Balboa Terrace. The theater was also the birthplace of the Gap, which occupied the building’s retail space when the clothing company got started in 1967.
The theater closed in 1977 and was bought by the Voice of the Pentecost, which also operated a small school there. In December 2015, the El Rey changed hands again, sold in a trustee sale on the steps of City Hall for $1.06 million. The seller was the Stanford Federal Credit Union, which had foreclosed on the property after the church defaulted on a loan. The buyer was a joint venture between Ricci Ventures and Green Point Land Co., both Marin investment groups.
Plans for the building are not yet firm. Project architect John Goldman said the overriding goal is to restore the tower and theater to their original splendor. He said the owners would like to lease it to a theater group and have reached out to San Francisco State University and City College of San Francisco, both nearby. Neither institution has expressed interest to date.
Goldman described himself as a longtime Pflueger buff and former board member of the Art Deco Society of California. He said the owners have to figure out a way to make the venture profitable, but that they are committed to rehabbing its historic fabric.
“If anyone is worried about my respecting the building — don’t be,” he said. “I love the building. The owners love the building. And we’re going to do right by the building. My goal is to figure out how to restore it.”
Most of the building’s original detailing has survived, although the structure is in bad shape, he said. There is water damage around the stage, spalling plaster in the auditorium, water stains in the lobby. “The church really let it go,” he said.
But historic restoration can be expensive, and the owners will want it to make a profit. There are four retail spaces that can be leased out. There are also two parking lots in the rear of the building, which the owners have talked with the city about developing for housing.
Tim Frye, historic preservation officer for the city Planning Department, emphasized that any new structures built on the property would have to be consistent with the U.S. secretary of the interior’s standards for the treatment of historic properties. Anything built would also have to step down to the residential neighborhood to the rear, which has a 40-foot height limit. And the site is sloped, which could make construction challenging.
“We have had good conversations,” Frye said. “This really is the anchor of the neighborhood — visibly, of course, but also because it’s also this incredible historic resource. It could be a powerful catalyst to start revitalizing that strip that has languished for quite a bit of time.”
At the Historic Preservation Commission meeting, Daniel Weaver, executive director of the Ocean Avenue Association, said the new ownership, along with the step toward landmark status, represents a long overdue fresh start for the El Rey.
“It’s been nothing but downhill since the day it stopped being a movie theater and started being a church,” Weaver said.