BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
A board of architects in Palo Alto today (Sept. 5) recommended that council deny a developer’s application to convert a movie theater into offices at Palo Alto Square.
Dozens of residents wrote emails to the city arguing against more offices and protesting the loss of the theater, which operated for nearly 50 years until the pandemic.
“I can’t remember another project since I’ve been on (the Architectural Review Board) that had that much public outcry,” board member Kendra Rosenberg said today.
Board member Peter Baltay said the conversion doesn’t follow the city’s Comprehensive Plan — specifically a policy that says that projects should “encourage land uses that address the needs of the community.”
“The Comprehensive Plan is there for a reason,” Baltay said, referring to the 500-page document that governs the physical layout of Palo Alto.
Ultimately, council will make a decision on the conversion, Principal Planner Claire Raybould said.
Lawyers for the developer, Hudson Pacific Properties, have argued that they have a right to build offices, because the movie theater is an allowed but not a required use.
Board members Mousam Adcock and David Hirsch were sympathetic to the developer.
“Is an empty building a benefit to the community?” Adcock asked.
“To use the legalities of our zoning against the owner here … I just think it’s unreasonable,” Hirsch said. “They have no choice.”
Jared Willis of Hudson Pacific turned in plans in May 2023 to fill in the sloped seating and add windows to both theater rooms, resulting in 14,400 square feet of high-end office space.
Planners initially considered the movie theater as a required “public benefit,” negotiated by council before allowing the office buildings in September 1969.
But Raybould said she reviewed the record and “has not been able to substantiate this conclusion.”
“At the time of the initial planned community rezoning for this site, there was no public benefit requirement,” Raybould said in a report for the board.
Hudson Pacific signed a long-term lease with Stanford to manage Palo Alto Square in 2014, and Cinemark ran the movies that had been showing since 1971.
Cinemark threatened to close down in 2016 because it couldn’t afford improvements that the landlord was requiring.
More than 2,500 residents signed a petition to keep the theaters open.
With pressure from city officials, a new lease was negotiated that allowed Cinemark to stay.
There were also reports of the theater closing in 1996 and 2001, but city officials supported its continued use then too.
Public health officials ordered all theaters to close in March 2020 because of the pandemic, and the Palo Alto Square theater never reopened. Cinemark gave the keys back to the landlord in May 2021.
“When we say that the Cinemark failed, I think there was a pretty mitigating circumstance there that caused that rupture in something that was otherwise a very long running theater and beloved portion of Palo Alto,” Rosenberg said this morning.
The movie theater at the San Antonio Shopping Center in Mountain View closed on July 1, making the Palo Alto theater even more important, resident Sam Tramiel said in an email to council on Saturday.
Ruth and Michael Lowy said they’ve been going to the theater since it opened in 1975, enjoying live streams of the Met Opera on Saturday mornings.
“It’s unthinkable to shutter this gem of a theater,” they said.