Movie Theater Plan Faces Showdown

Westside film fans dreamed of someone riding to the rescue of Santa Monica’s last independent neighborhood movie house--someone like the cowboy in the white hat who always managed to save the day in horse operas shown there generations ago.

The 60-year-old Aero Theater, with its neon-lit marquee and tiny ticket booth outside the popcorn-scented lobby, is certainly a throwback to the time when every movie seemed to have a happy ending.

But when actor Robert Redford showed up to save the theater, the locals found themselves facing something more akin to the unsettling finale to “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” than the sweethearts-kissing fade-out of “Romance on the Range.”

Redford and his Sundance Film Centers are proposing to preserve the Aero by turning it into a prototype showplace for independent films. They hope it would attract much bigger audiences than the struggling theater has had in decades.

To enhance the cutting-edge movies that have made the Sundance Film Festival famous, Redford’s group intends to restore the theater’s Art Deco furnishings, install state-of-the-art projection equipment and convert two adjoining storefronts into restaurants.

Only one thing seems to be missing from the plan: a parking lot.

Built in 1939 for the neighborhood walk-in crowd, the Aero doesn’t have one. And despite the sizable audience that Sundance officials hope to draw, the best they have been able to do so far is to find space for 28 cars about two blocks away.

Nearby homeowners say that is not nearly enough to keep adjoining residential streets from being clogged with movie goers. So a shootout unlike any ever seen on the Aero Theater screen is looming at City Hall between the townsfolk and the newcomers.

“We think what they’re doing architecturally is really neat,” said Doris Sosin, one of several neighborhood leaders briefed Monday night about the project by Sundance officials. “But outrageous is the word for the parking. We’re very concerned.”

Residents of the upscale neighborhood along Montana Avenue on Santa Monica’s north side cheered six months ago when they learned that Sundance was interested in taking over the venerable Aero.

The theater, at 1328 Montana, was built by aircraft manufacturer Donald Douglas and operated around the clock so wartime workers on all shifts at his Santa Monica plant had a place to see movies. But like most single-screen movie houses, the Aero was struggling by the 1990s.

When a developer purchased the 550-seat theater in 1999, residents considered seeking landmark status from the city to protect it. They dropped that idea after new owner James Rosenfield assured them that he was committed to preserving the theater and warned that a landmark designation might jeopardize his efforts.

Rosenfield--who has lived a block from the theater for a dozen years--said he was determined not to convert the Aero into retail space, as owners of other small theaters in Los Angeles have done.

“There’s a difference between saving a building and preserving the use of a building,” said Rosenfield, who has kept the Aero open. “People love this old theater. It’s just that not enough of them go there to see movies.”

Rosenfield learned that Sundance was studying ways of showcasing independent movies often shunned by larger multiplex theaters. So he wrote to Redford and asked that the actor consider the Aero.

Redford, it turned out, was familiar with the Aero. He lived in Santa Monica as a boy and the Montana Avenue theater was where he first developed a passion for movies, according to Sundance officials.

Sundance signed a 20-year lease and hired experts to design the theater-restaurant complex. Plans completed last week show the old auditorium divided into two wide rooms--one with 300 seats, the other with 165. The design calls for a 50-seat bistro and a 25-seat cafe. The cuisine for each is undetermined.

“They will support the economic viability of the theater,” said Scott Dickey, vice president of Sundance Film Centers. “If the restaurants go, the theater goes. It won’t make economic sense without them.”

The 28 parking spaces found on a nearby realty firm’s lot fulfill a city requirement for restaurant parking, Dickey said. Because of its age, the Aero Theater is exempt from city parking criteria.

“There is a parking problem on Montana. We understand the concern and are trying to alleviate it,” Dickey said Tuesday.

Another meeting is planned with residents this week, and Dickey indicated that such remedies as valet parking are being explored. “We’re still a little ways away from where everybody’s comfortable with it,” he said.

Although Santa Monica city planners said Tuesday that no public review has yet been scheduled for Sundance’s development proposal, Dickey predicted that it will occur in December.

In the meantime, everybody’s hoping for a happy ending.

“We support emerging filmmakers and want their work to reach audiences,” Dickey said.

“This is an opportunity for Sundance to test the validity of operating small community theaters. It’s something near and dear to the organization. And to Mr. Redford personally.”