Curtain Falls on the California Theatre : Government: The City Council, led by Bob Filner, votes against saving the downtown landmark.

The 64-year-old California Theatre, once home to vaudeville, organ recitals, movies, live theater and most recently rock ‘n’ roll, now faces the wrecking ball after the San Diego City Council voted Tuesday to downgrade its status as a landmark worthy of historical preservation.

Despite the objections of those wishing to save the theater, its fate was sealed when City Councilman Bob Filner--whose district includes the downtown area of 4th Avenue and C Street, where the building is situated--announced a plan worked out with the property owners.

That would be the 4th & C Corp., an umbrella organization encompassing the five charities named as beneficiaries by the late Ariel Wharton (Bud) Coggleshall, who owned the theater at the time of his death in 1986 at age 84.

Under Filner’s plan, which the council approved by a vote of 5 to 2 with Councilman Bruce Henderson abstaining and Councilman Ron Roberts absent, a trust fund would be established for the purpose of preserving historic buildings. Money for the fund would come from the project that replaces the theater.

The fund would be managed in part by the San Diego Community Foundation, the largest of the charities named in Coggleshall’s will and the one most likely to benefit from the $200-million redevelopment project slated for the property.

The caveat of Filner’s proposal was, of course, that demolition--and the subsequent new project--be allowed to proceed.

Historic preservationists at the meeting were quick to condemn both the plan and Filner.

“It’s not a plan--it’s a deal, worked out behind closed doors, without any public scrutiny at all,” said David Swarens, president of the Save Our Heritage Organisation, who argued vehemently in favor of saving the California. “Bob Filner is the Donald Trump of local politics.”

“I find it ironic that they’re setting up a trust fund to save historic buildings but doing so by first tearing down an historic building,” said Steve Karo, a member of the Balboa Theatre Foundation, who argued on behalf of the California.

Karo said the city and the council had “thrown good money after bad” in “commissioning one study after another” on what to do with several of San Diego’s aging and rarely used theaters, including the Balboa, the California, the North Park and the Spreckels.

“A near-hopeless situation has been created,” Karo said. “They spend all of this money on studies but not a penny on even one constructive solution about what to do, for instance, with the Balboa.

“At one time, they said the California and the Spreckels were worth saving, at the expense of the Balboa. Now, in essence, they’re saying the Balboa is worth saving at the expense of the California, when we were assured all along that such a thing would never happen.”

Filner argued that San Diego was left with several old theaters, none of which a financially strapped city had the resources to restore, much less operate.

“In an ideal world,” he said, “it would be wonderful to save each and every one.”

Filner said he supported the Fourth & C Corp. because the charities involved need the money capable of being generated by a multimillion-dollar project far more than San Diego needs another theater.

The councilman noted that, “depending on the estimate,” it would cost $5 million to $17 million to restore the 1,750-seat California, “and it’s just not worth it.”

Those speaking on behalf of gutting the theater and building in its place a 34-story office complex included representatives from several of Coggleshall’s beneficiaries--the University of San Diego, the philanthropic San Diego Community Foundation and the Multiple Sclerosis Society. (Other beneficiaries include the San Diego Rowing Club and the San Diego Crew Classic, both of which Coggleshall supported avidly.)

Lynn Heidel, the attorney for the 4th & C Corp., said the theater was not historic, nor was it worthy of being saved. She said that John Paxton Perrine, the architect who designed the building, was “not an important figure. . . . He never won any major awards.”

Heidel went on to laud the urban accomplishments of Hillman Properties, the Pittsburgh-based development company that wants to rebuild the entire square block between 4th and 3rd avenues, B and C streets, and share the proceeds with the San Diego Community Foundation.

Kathryn Willett, chairman of the Historical Site Board, said she never understood why the foundation and the preservationists could not both walk away with what they wanted.

She said the 4th & C Corp. was operating under the “perception of increased assets,” when, in fact, it was banking all its hopes on a high-rise office complex at a time of war and recession and with the city facing a vacancy rate of 35% for commercial office space.

The Hillman Properties’ concept for the building calls for a multiplex movie theater and an airy, botanical garden underneath about 30 stories of office space, but, Willett said, “You can go to any suburb of San Diego and find that kind of theater or that kind of concept.”

Heidel, the attorney whose clients want the theater demolished, said the massive Wurlitzer pipe organ once housed in the California would soon be housed in the new building.

“But where ?” Willett asked incredulously. “And without at least a 1,000-seat theater in which to play it, what good would it do?”

City planner Ron Buckley, who defended the Historical Site Board’s recent vote to make the California a “Grade 1” site, worthy of historical preservation, said the only hope for saving the theater would be through the courts--one that isn’t likely to be pursued.

A heated debate occurred in the council’s chambers between Filner and Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer, who eventually voted for Filner’s motion.

Voting against Filner’s proposal were council members Linda Bernhardt and John Hartley.

In implementing the trust-fund idea, Filner called for an “exemption” to the recently enacted Resource Protection Ordinance, designed to protect “sensitive” resources, such as hillsides, canyons, flood plains and historic buildings.

Wolfsheimer vehemently argued against such an exemption, “which we argued long and hard to implement, only now to compromise with this vote.”

Hartley, whose own district includes the North Park, a theater in need of restoration, said he could not support Filner’s plan and favored saving the California because “we have to look to our past and protect our past to even have a sense of our future.

“The destruction of one theater to save others is not something that makes a lot of sense.”