By Thomas K. Pendergast

West Portal Avenue might be getting 64 units of new housing if the San Francisco Planning Department approves a project which will demolish the old CinéArts at the Empire movie theatre and replace it with a 10-story building.

The movie house closed in February 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. A couple of months later, in May 2021, the Regal 12 Stonestown Galleria Theatre multiplex reopened, establishing itself as the neighborhood theater.

According to documents filed with the department, the new 120-foot-tall building will offer 16 one-bedroom, 36 two-bedroom and 12 three-bedroom dwelling units, with 10 of those units to be rented below the market rate.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that San Francisco builder DM Development is collaborating with the ownership group led by Jesse Appleton, whose family has owned the property for more than 100 years. The Chronicle says Appleton and a partner bought it in 2021 from other family members after longtime operator Cinemark broke its lease and closed the theater, removing seats, screens and projectors.

The preliminary proposal filed with the department also shows 27 automobile parking spaces for residents and 71 bicycle parking spaces, three of which will be for retail customers.

The ground-floor retail space will be 4,094 square feet and the residential parking will be accessed by a garage door on Vicente Street.

The project is taking advantage of two California state laws that allow the structure to be taller and denser than the current zoning allows. One of the laws, Senate Bill 330, doubles the allowable density on the site, while the other, Assembly Bill 2011, requires a streamlined 90-day, over-the-counter approval.

The Chronicle further reports that the project is not using Mayor Daniel Lurie’s recently passed “Family Zoning plan.” That plan would allow more than 64 units, but the apartments would have been smaller than what the developers thought was appropriate.

Ten of the units will be rented at below market rate, with five of those affordable to families of four earning 50% of area median income, about $77,000, and five targeting four-person households making 120% of area median income, about $187,000. It will likely break ground in 2027, according to the Chronicle.

The firm designing the building is Handel Architects LLP, which has offices in New York City, San Francisco, Boston, Denver and Hong Kong according to its Wikipedia page. In San Francisco, it has designed 18 buildings, including the Millennium Tower.

According to SFYimby, the developer invoked Assembly Bill 2011 to request ministerial approval for a residential project, with some affordable housing on a lot previously zoned for commercial use. The applicant also utilizes the State Density Bonus law and Assembly Bill 1287 to achieve a 100% density bonus.

The neighborhood will be sacrificing a bit of its history to make room for new neighbors.

The Western Neighborhoods Project’s website OutsideLands.org says the movie theater being replaced opened more than a century ago on Dec. 26, 1925, as the Portal Theatre.

Local architect Irving Morrow (of Morrow & Garren) originally designed a more open entry courtyard for the theater and business block, but much of his 1923 plan, including a Moorish style, was carried out.

The theater was built by Hyman S. Levin, a local theater mogul.

According to his 1975 obituary in the Jewish News of Northern California (J.), “he came to San Francisco in 1905 and in 1908 opened his first nickelodeon, and shortly afterwards, including the Vogue movie theatre, which is still in operation. He and his sons operated theaters in many cities in the area.”

Renamed and re-opened on Oct. 1, 1936, as the “Empire,” it had its single screen split into three in 1974. Then in 2003 Cinemark took over and it was renamed CinéArts at the Empire.

According to the San Francisco Theatres website, the original movie theater could seat about 900 people. A remodel in the early 1940s increased the theater’s capacity to 1,075 seats. After the 1974 splitting into three theatres, that dropped down to 605 seats, with a breakdown of 295, 158 and 152 seats between them.

In 2023 the lobby was temporarily used as a Jewish Community Center, according to J., after Rabbi Menachem (Mendel) Levin (no relation to Hyman S. Levin) approached District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar about using the space and she put him in touch with Appleton.

“This is a great match that meets the needs of the community until there is a permanent plan for the theater,” Melgar told J. “We were happy to connect Rabbi Mendel Levin with the new owners of the Empire Theater.”

The San Francisco Standard reported in a story on Feb. 27 the West Portal Merchants Association is against the construction plans. Deidre Von Rock, president of association, has gathered more than 1,000 signatures for a petition in opposition to the proposed property, it said.

“The petition launched last month, takes aim at what Von Rock calls the ‘grossly oversized’ ambitions of the theater’s out-of-town owners,” The Standard wrote. “It claims the project would loom like a concrete monolith over a corridor where three stories is the general maximum – a zoning reality the developer, DM Development, has neatly sidestepped by invoking state density housing laws.”

The new plan is still pending department approval; no construction costs or construction timeline have been made public yet.