Movie Theater Plan Gets Bad Reviews From Neighborhood

A group of Encino residents, projecting their own version of a horror story, want to lower the curtain on a 1,500-seat movie theater planned next to their homes.

It will be “Nightmare on Gaviota Street” every night if the cinema is built in a shopping center proposed for the 15900 block of Ventura Boulevard, the homeowners say.

Residents have complained to Los Angeles city planners that moviegoers’ cars will choke their 35-year-old neighborhood each evening.

The protest is being led by Los Angeles slow-growth advocate Gerald Silver--who lives on Gaviota Avenue a few hundred feet from the theater site.

“It will dump all the cars and traffic onto a quiet residential street, our street,” said Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino.

The theater is planned as part of a 70,000-square-foot shopping center to be called “Encino Pavilion” by its developer, Heltzer Enterprises of Santa Monica. Plans now under review by city planners call for a 765-car parking lot below the shopping center and at ground level.

Silver and others in his neighborhood said that cars leaving those lots would exit onto Gaviota.

“It will be a circus,” Silver said. “We’re adamantly opposed to a motion-picture cinema being put in the most congested area of Ventura Boulevard.

Only Theater Opposed

“It’s already gridlocked at Ventura and Sepulveda,” where a similar cinema complex is located, Silver said.

Representatives of the developer have told city officials that Ventura Boulevard can handle the increases in traffic.

That claim is being studied by John Parker, a city associate zoning administrator who is expected to decide within several weeks whether to issue a conditional-use permit for the project.

The permit is needed because the developer hopes to use a small, residentially zoned corner of the project site for part of the shopping center’s parking lot.

Parker said Wednesday that he will analyze the theater parking requirements before ruling on Heltzer’s request.

Heltzer officials could not be reached for comment Wednesday.