The out-of-town owners of our beloved West Portal Empire Theater are putting POTENTIAL PROFITS over every single interest of our neighborhood.  The grossly oversized apartment building with a projected SIXTY-FOUR units, NINE stories and TWENTY-SEVEN parking spots, would forever mar our corridor with a general maximum 3 story limit, would involve A MINIMUM of TWO YEARS of construction that would disrupt day-to-day business of West Portal small businesses, putting them at risk of closure.  Many will not be able to weather the downturn in business caused by construction on the block.

We are told this project is supposed to help our affordable housing crisis, but the majority of the apartments will be market rate, luxury units priced well over $4000+/month.  Producing this overpriced housing will have a severe economic toll on the corridor already suffering from the loss of regular foot traffic the Empire theater brought to our corridor. 

Relying on state density housing laws that permit a building of this size, the owners of the Empire for five years have refused to discuss reasonable options to preserve the theater space with the West Portal Merchants and local philanthropists.  The resulting project has no plans to restore the high levels of foot traffic the theater brought especially on weekends and evenings. 

Our elected D7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar has been their champion, and she’s failed to listen to her constituents’ legitimate concerns or broker a compromise which mitigates those merchant and neighbor concerns. 

The Merchants SUPPORT reasonable housing additions to West Portal, but we have a larger vision that would truly benefit West Portal community: We call on the owners to honor the history of the space and the needs of the West Portal community by limiting the size of the development to fit within our existing ecosystem and to incorporate a 500 seat multi-use  theater into the design, which could be owned or leased by a neighborhood non-profit.  This new Empire theater would serve as a community space, hosting live music, theater performances, literary events, and family films.  A theater of this type would be an economic engine for the corridor, providing much-needed evening business to restaurants and small businesses.

We urge all decision-makers to reconsider the 9-story development in West Portal and have the owners only proceed if the capacity is reasonable for our corridor and preservation of our theater space is incorporated into the design.