Los Angeles’ theater district is getting a second act.
Recent efforts have been made to revitalize the theaters on South Broadway, hoping to attract younger audiences while still maintaining their historic appeal.
The theaters on South Broadway, incuding the Tower Theater, the Los Angeles Theatre, the Orpheum Theatre and the State Theatre, beckon patrons to not only appreciate the performances on the inside, but to admire the art on the outside.
Recently renovated marble floors, sweeping staircases, plush carpeting and scaffolded ceilings inside these theaters evoke the vintage L.A. glamour not often found in modern clubs and venues.
“For the West Coast, other than San Francisco, I really don’t think there’s a larger concentration of historic buildings,” said Tara Jones, the founder of the nonprofit company Historic Consultants Incorporated and a consultant for the Delson Company, a group that owns four of the theaters on South Broadway. “The architecture is really just amazing and very unique to California and Los Angeles.”
With the majority of the area’s development occurring at the turn of the century, downtown Los Angeles once boasted large, fast cultural growth.
However, by the end of the 20th century, South Broadway was no longer the thriving artistic mecca it once was.
“People don’t even know where (South Broadway) is. It’s kind of sad,” said Priscilla Watson, a third-year theater student.
“We (as students at UCLA) don’t really travel, and a lot of people don’t know where downtown is. They don’t know how to get there,” she said.
Historic theater owners now aim to recreate a vibrant theater center and make South Broadway an alternative entertainment destination spot to Hollywood and West Los Angeles.
“Instead of going to the Wiltern or going to Royce Hall or going to the Wadsworth right around the corner from you, there are other places to see a great (show),” said Steve Needleman, owner of the Orpheum, a historic theater on South Broadway that finished renovations a year ago.
“You’re seeing a part of history down here that you just can’t see on the west side of town. … It gives you a totally different ambience to enjoy,” he said.
Needleman began renovating the Orpheum six years ago and completed his renovation efforts last year. Developing a strong, stable, theatergoing audience in downtown Los Angeles, however, proved difficult.
“The biggest challenge of getting to this point was really getting the agents and the artists in the community to start hearing about downtown enough and getting enough of them coming into the theater to realize this was a viable alternative for Los Angeles,” Needleman said.
Convincing theatergoers and artists was not the only hurdle theater owners and consultants had to face. Finding funding from councilmen and mayors also proved problematic.
“Effort has been put into it in the past from several generations of mayors and city folks,” Jones said.
“Putting everybody on the same page is one of the challenges in the past, but it seems that we’re finally all growing in the same direction,” she said.
With Los Angeles City Councilman Jose Huizar’s recent revival plans to work with theater owners and city planning departments to develop better parking and theater facilities downtown, however, Needleman and other theater owners can finally focus on developing a positive reputation for their theaters.
In order to develop this new status, Needleman worked on drawing younger, hipper acts to the Orpheum, hosting concerts with artists such as HIM, Ben Harper, Daughtry and Cake, as well as the Miss California USA and Miss California Teen USA pageants and “American Idol’s” final competition, he said.
“Whenever I go to the theater, everyone in the audience is over 60,” Watson said. “I think appealing to a younger audience is the definite push we need.”
At the Tower, Jones has also witnessed the introduction of a large variety of acts and venues to attract all Angelenos.
“It’s live theaters, it’s plays, it’s concerts, fashion shows, film festivals, symphony concerts ““ there’s a whole host of programming that is kind of in the mix of the development plan,” Jones said.
Renovation developments and reputation aside, Needleman and Jones still recognize that there are some challenges to drawing a larger theatergoing audience that are out of their control.
“I will admit that getting to downtown from the West side is not easy,” Needleman said.
“So we’re starting to work on some mass transportation and nine, 10 years from now, it should be a whole lot easier.”
Jones noted, however, that there are some transportation options available now.
“You can take the Red Line all the way down from the West side in the Hollywood area. … It’s a great time to visit,” Jones said.
Downtown may not possess Hollywood’s glamorous appeal or Beverly Hills’ clean-cut affluence, but experiencing a piece of Los Angeles’ historic theater district can be an alternative to the city’s characteristic sprawling cityscape.
“Downtown Los Angeles offers some really wonderful historic treasures, and I think the theaters are the jewels of those treasures,” Jones said.