Public Comment

For a city of 119,000 that was once proud of its diversity and cultural riches, to allow all three of its downtown movie theaters to be demolished in favor of more high rise residential units priced beyond the means of most Berkeley residents seems to be short-sighted at best and a vote against the art of film and its future. I urge all who deplore the rapid changes being made to our city, with an abundance of market-rate housing displacing the historical fabric of Berkeley, to ask that our city government at least protect and preserve the great California Theatre. When its heirs elected to sell instead of accept the Landmark lease renewal offer, we still had the 10-screen Shattuck Cinemas and the United Artists multiplex theaters downtown. But now they too are to be demolished to make way for even more mostly above-median-income residential units. The California Theatre has long served the residents of Berkeley by bringing us movies on the big screen, some broadly entertaining, others works of art, and the best of them both.

Those with limited interest in film have concluded that the simultaneous advent of the covid pandemic and film streaming corporations has ended the viability of movie theaters as a venue to see films. But the art of film requires public venues with large screens. Great films cannot be appreciated on home screens, and the vitality of the medium thrives on public gatherings to enjoy and discuss its works. Where will we see Francis Ford Coppola’s forthcoming Megalopolis?

Any city that values culture and the arts has and will continue to have movie theaters for the benefit of its residents and visitors to the city. A city with a great university has cause to ensure that students can access the art of film and be able to see movies seen as they were made to be seen on a big screen. Film can benefit the emotional and social well-being of young people, when they can leave their dorm or apartment rooms to go see an entertaining, enlightening, emotionally involving film, discuss it with friends and professors, and participate in their community.

Movie theaters have been the economic engine of our downtown economy. Many cafes and restaurants and other businesses benefitted from the customers attracted to Berkeley's movie theaters. In the 2015-19 effort to save the Shattuck Cinemas from demolition, some 5000 or more signatures in support of the theater were gathered at its entrance, with 60% of the addresses from beyond Berkeley. That is to say, movie attendees were bringing their money into Berkeley to see a movie and enjoy a meal. They kept the streets enlivened and safe at night. Some 350,000 people bought tickets at the Shattuck Cinemas in 2015, according to records provided by the manager at the time.

The demolition of the California Theatre as a movie theater is not acceptable. If the demolition of the Shattuck Cinemas had not been approved, Berkeley would still be well-served by that excellent 10-screen theater replete with 1920s movie palace decor and hand-painted murals, an admirable example of spatial repurposing from department store to multi-screen movie theater. Berkeley has numerous performing arts spaces, from the UC Theatre, once a great venue for world cinema, to the several on Berkeley Way, the Back Room, and The Marsh for plays and musical performances. Replacing a great movie theater with a much smaller empty performance space will not compensate for the shameful loss of all of our downtown movie theaters.