WHITTIER : Council OKs Request to Restore Theater Sign
The City Council has approved a mall owner’s request to restore a 30-foot art deco sign that once graced the old Whittier Theater.
The owners of King Richard’s Antique Mall will pay restoration costs, estimated at $30,000, and hope to mount it on the shopping center’s main building at Penn Street and Whittier Boulevard later this year.
“We’d like to save a piece of history and put it up on our building,” said John Passage, manager of the mall.
The city has been storing the sign since the 62-year-old theater was torn down in July, 1991.
City staff must still determine whether the mall structure can support the sign. Earlier this year, the Whittier Redevelopment Agency rejected a proposal to include the sign in a $1.3-million multiplex theater expansion on South Greenleaf Avenue. Agency officials said that architectural changes would have been required in the theater expansion to accommodate the sign.
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