Landmark’s Opera Plaza Cinema, which a property owner at one point wanted to convert it into office space and then was threatened to close indefinitely by the pandemic, is set to re-open Friday, Nov. 19, with a couple of San Francisco classics and some new arthouse fare on its screens.
The return of the theater, announced Monday, Nov. 15, comes after a $1.2 million renovation funded by Landmark and the nonprofit San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation.
“We are eager to welcome our audience back to the completely renovated Opera Plaza Cinema,” Paul Serwitz, Landmark Theatres President and COO, said in a statement. “Regulars will enjoy a significantly enhanced movie-going experience. We are extremely grateful to have been able to partner with the San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation on this important project.”
Jack Bair, who co-founded the SFNTF with fellow San Francisco Giants executive Alfonso Felder in 2002, said not only was the theater worth saving, but its was a vital cog in the neighborhood.
“Landmark has a long reputation of showing art and independent film in San Francisco,” Bair, the Giants’ longtime Executive Vice President & Chief Legal Officer, told The Chronicle by phone. “The Opera Plaza has long been the home for that. It’s an important theater for a lot of people who enjoy that type of film. … There’s been a lot of support from neighborhoods and the commercial districts and from the film community.”
The news will be welcome to film fans after Landmark announced the permanent closing of the California Theatre in Berkeley last month and San Francisco’s Clay Theatre in the Fillmore District in January 2020.
The revamped Opera Plaza, located at 601 Van Ness Ave., will debut with two San Francisco cop classics — “Bullitt” (1968) and “Dirty Harry” (1971) — as well as new arthouse films: the Asian American indie feature “I Saw a Simple Man,” starring Constance Wu; the documentary “Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time,” about the author of “Slaughterhouse Five”; and Kosovo’s official submission for the Academy Awards, “Hive.”
Just a few blocks away from the Opera Plaza on Van Ness Avenue, the renovated CGV San Francisco 14, formerly the AMC Van Ness 1000, re-opened in September. The return of a combined 18 movie screens is the latest sign that the avenue is not only coming out of its pandemic slumber, but is also emerging from the nearly completed rebuilding project by the city that has torn up a two-mile stretch of the street for five years; a project that has threatened some businesses along the corridor.
“The commercial districts benefit from the existence of theaters on the street,” Bair said. “A pretty good percentage of people who attend the movies bought dinner or shop in the stores that adjacent before or after, therefore they are important economic contributors of the street.”
The SFNTF said the donors for the renovation were venture capitalist Arthur Rock, First Republic Bank CEO Jim Herbert and wife Cecilia Herbert, board chair of Blackrock’s iShares Exchange Traded Funds; and the children of apartment building owner Russell Flynn, who committed to the project but died before donating the funds.
The foundation signed a 10-year lease with property owners Pacific Union Development Co. Landmark, who will continue to run the theater.
Chronicle staff writer J.K. Dineen contributed to this report.
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