Is it finally curtains for the Miramar Theater?
By Karin Gallagher
San Clemente Times

What first appears as a simple struggle over an old theater reveals itself to be a complicated city civics course, tangled with varying interests and clashing opinions, that promises to be our community’s Next Big Battle.

During Hollywood’s Golden Age, long before cineplexes, megaplexes and IMAXes proliferated the modern cinematic landscape, people flocked to community movie houses, single-screen theatrical purlieus, to take in Tinseltown’s latest and greatest.

The construction of a movie theater in any given Small Town, USA, really announced that it had arrived—that it was on the cultural map—and in 1938, when the lights went down and the curtain came up at the San Clemente Theatre for the first time (it became the Miramar Theater years later), this little beachside town stood a little taller as its community roots sank a little deeper.

Today, nearly 70 years after opening its doors to reveal a state-of-the-art sound system, plush loge seating and an air-conditioned environment, the once dynamic but increasingly decayed Miramar Theater—with its paint peeling, tile roof crumbling, lobby burned by vagrants, and doors, windows and box office boarded up for most of the last 15 or so years—may soon find itself mired in a fierce battle over its future, standing as a crumbling symbol of the debate between historic preservation and community growth.

On November 23, 2005, Terry Hirchag, a local developer, San Clemente resident and the owner for the last two-plus years of the theater and former bowling alley behind it, submitted an application to the city to demolish both structures. In their place, he hopes to build the Miramar Plaza, a 43,100-square-foot, four-story commercial and residential center that will include three privately owned penthouses; 10 fractional ownership (timeshare) town homes; and numerous retail spaces, including a high-end restaurant with ocean-view dining, a wine tasting bar, an art gallery, boutique shops, a real estate office, a bakery and a day spa.

The plans for the building, designed in the Spanish Colonial architectural style, include a re-creation of the existing Miramar Theater tower—albeit taller and larger—with a viewing area, open to the public, at its perch. Perhaps most significantly, Hirchag’s plans also include two levels of subterranean parking to accommodate the traffic it will require to sustain such a project economically.

The parking issue at and around the Miramar has been a major sticking point for years; the building’s commercial function, another. “It just can’t make it as a theater,” says Hirchag. “Number one, I don’t think you could sell enough tickets to make it work economically, and number two, you can’t park it. The parking requirements for a theater are just immense—you’d have to tear the whole building down and put in underground parking, probably three layers deep, for a theater.”

Tearing down the Miramar Theater, however, isn’t a simple proposition because it resides on the city’s Designated Historic Structures list. “Because they’re [proposing] demolishing a historic structure an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) is required, in accordance with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA),” explains Larry Longenecker, AICP, senior planner for the City of San Clemente. “As a first step in the process of conducting an EIR, the public will be invited to a scoping meeting—probably in late June or July—to comment on what impact they think the project might have.”

On June 5 City Council approved hiring environmental consulting firm UltraSystems of Irvine to act as the EIR lead. A number of key issues will likely be explored in the EIR report, including traffic implications, historical significance and structural integrity. Says Longenecker, “One of the things we have to look at before we can approve a demolition is, even if it’s listed on the city’s historic structures inventory, is how truly significant is this theater?”

Extremely, say local historical preservationists, who are opposed to the theater’s demolition and in favor of its adaptive reuse—a term set forth in the U.S. Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation regulations. Furthermore, preservationists cite CEQA, which dictates that a building cannot be destroyed if there is a viable alternative to demolition.

“What we at the Historical Society primarily do is remind the city of its own rules and remind the city of the rules that are on the books elsewhere,” says its president, Mike Cotter. “We’re trying to protect the city’s historical resources because that’s what the city said it wants to do. You can find verbiage in the [city’s] General Plan, North Beach Plan and the Strategic Plan that all talk about the intent to save the Miramar Theater.”

The Historical Society hopes that the building will be reused in a more modern application, but one that leaves the original architecture in place. “We recognize that there’s no market for a one-screen movie theater in this world,” says Cotter, who points to a rendering done by architect Henry Lenny as an effective possibility for its adaptive reuse, which transforms it—on paper, at least—into a retail and entertainment center while keeping its original form.
 
Hirchag says he spent his first year as the theater’s owner designing projects that incorporated the original structure. “We tried to design utilizing part of the square box [of the theater] and it just looked really tacky,” he says. “It just looked like all these appendages tacked on to this big, square box. It makes no sense.” During that time Hirchag also conducted independent—and therefore unofficial—historic and structural assessments of the building. “I really had to acquire all that knowledge before I developed this to know that the building could be torn down,” he says.

The independent historical assessment, conducted by S&S Commercial Environmental Services of Chino, found that the theater and bowling alley, as one building or separately, don’t fall under the purview of Historical Register Status as defined by CEQA, as none of the Standards for Historical Landmarks were met. In addition, it found that the buildings were built after the Ole Hanson “Spanish Village by the Sea” period of development.

Potentially more damaging if mirrored in the EIR’s official report, Hirchag’s independent structural assessment, conducted by Khatri International of Pasadena, found the building to be made of Unreinforced Masonry (URM), which lacks an internal steel frame and “means it could fall down in an earthquake,” says Hirchag. “You’re talking in the neighborhood of $4 to $6 million to rehab that building, plus the debt service that’s on it right now—the cost to purchase the ownership of the property—so by the time you do that and all the structural improvements you have to, I don’t see it being a viable venture, economically.”

Raad Ghantous, San Clemente Historical Society board member and chair of the Miramar Theater committee says, “The building might fall just outside the ‘Founders’ Era,’ but you have the same contractor, the same style of architecture, the same approach, the same quality of construction. Whether or not it [meets] the definable historical parameters or falls just outside it, [the Miramar] has cultural significance and a place in the fabric of the community.”

As for its structural integrity? “This building is a concrete bunker,” says Ghantous. “To date, I haven’t seen a structural report that says this building is structurally unsound. I know that reports can be different one way or another, depending on who’s writing them and what they’re testing for. What I am seeing, however, is a building that’s being allowed to just sit there and decay.”
 
Because of the debate already brewing over these pivotal issues, the historical and structural reports included in the official city-commissioned EIR—which may take about seven months to complete—will be highly anticipated and closely scrutinized by all parties involved and the community at large. As the EIR is being compiled, city staffers will work with Hirchag to refine his plans and prepare them for public hearing, says Longenecker. The Planning Commission will get the next word and will make a recommendation to the City Council, and the City Council will ultimately decide whether to approve or deny it. If the project meets with approvals through each of these steps, the Coastal Commission will have the last word.

“The quandary with all historic preservation is that for a building to last through the ages it has to have some adaptability to it,” says Jim Pechous, senior planner for the City of San Clemente. “And the more a building can adapt to new types of uses and the more flexible the building space is, the greater its chance of preservation through time. A lot of people think, well, it’s an old building. It’s an eyesore and a blight on the community and we’d be better off removing it and starting fresh. Other people think it’s a historic resource. It tells a part of San Clemente history; it’s about the people who helped found our city. And there’s importance in that past and carrying it on to the future and, if you remove it, you lose that story.”

The Miramar isn’t the only building getting a closer look these days; in fact, the entire North Beach area may soon get a facelift. On June 12, City Council unanimously approved selecting developer Lab Holding LLC to partner with and help it implement the vision for North Beach and help develop its city-owned properties.

In the age-old, ongoing and soon-to-intensify debate of Preserve vs. Rebuild, the terms “icon” and “eyesore” seem to surface time and again. And while proponents on each side have made their arguments clear, the suggestion that the community can be neatly divided into one of these two philosophical camps dismisses the supposition that many people may rest squarely in what’s likely a subset of the two: those who agree with both.

Karin Gallagher