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The Alameda City Council continued this week to move forward with a $23.7 million multi-faceted project that would restore the long-abandoned 77-year-old Art Deco Alameda Theater in the heart of the city’s downtown, as well as building an adjoining seven-screen cineplex and an adjacent six-story parking garage. 

At Tuesday’s council meeting, after two rancorous back-to-back public hearings that featured close to 80 speakers and continued until after midnight, the council decided by identical 3-1-1 v otes to accept revised designs for the cineplex and adjoining parking garage and to reject an appeal to the city Planning Board’s approval of use permits. 

Santa Rosa developer Kyle Conner has been brought in by the city to restore the theater and build t he cineplex, but title to the property itself will remain with the city. City officials and downtown business leaders hope that the restoration and added public parking will help revive the city’s Park Street area. 

In the early hours of Wednesday morning after the latest round in the Alameda Theater Project wars, Conner appeared drained and apprehensive of the next battle, while opponents of the project seemed upbeat. 

Asked what his next steps would following two separate council votes at Tuesday’s publ ic hearings to move the Historic Alameda Theater Project forward, an exhausted Conner said, “We really have to see what happens with this next thing.” 

And after Citizens For A Megaplex Free Alameda leader Valeria Ruma said, “The council vote was not tota lly unexpected so we don’t consider this a setback.” She told supporters, “Now it’s on to the next step.” 

Both sides were talking about a pending CEQA lawsuit filed early last month by the citizens’ group in Superior Court, asking the court to order an e nvironmental impact report for the project. The city has not yet filed a response to the lawsuit complaint. 

If the court rules that the project can move forward without an EIR, Conner said that he expects to submit construction drawings to the city’s Bui lding Department in four to six months for approval. 

Mayor Beverly Johnson held the hearings without a break “so that speakers will be able to talk at a reasonable time.” 

Councilmember Tony Daysog cast both no votes, while Councilmember Doug deHaan abst ained both times. Daysog said that while he supported restoration of the theater, he continued to be concerned that the city was not recouping enough money from the project. 

Project proponents said the project had been studied enough and urged the council to move the project forward, while opponents argued that the council should put a halt to the project while considering alternate plans. 

Several charges by speakers from both sides reflected some of the bitterness of the continuing months-long battle. One proponent said that a citizen lawsuit filed against the project “smacks to me of blackmail; that’s not appropriate” while an opponent accused councilmembers of “already having your hearts set. I’m disgusted with you. I truly suspect corruption.” 

John Spangler, a project opponent, said, “I’m really sad tonight. I have friends on both sides of this issue. There have been a lot of words said in anger that should not have been said. I don’t think we want a divided body politic, but we have one.” 

Unlike an August City Council hearing , where close to 100 people spoke and opposition speakers outnumbered proponents 7 to 1, opinion for and against the cineplex/garage project at Tuesday’s hearing was more evenly divided. 

While there is almost universa l support in Alameda for restoration of the theater, opposition from the grassroots Citizens For A Megaplex Free Alameda group has emerged in recent months to oppose both the cineplex portion of the project and the parking garage. 

Last summer, organizati on leaders said they had collected more than 3,000 citizen signatures in opposition to the cineplex and parking garage. Robert Gavrich, one of the two organization leaders who filed an appeal to the Planning Board’s use permit approvals, said Tuesday, “Ou r numbers are growing every week. We’re not going to stop.” 

Despite the heated rhetoric by some on each side, there are signs that the two sides are inching closer to each other. 

In response to opposition complaints about the portions of the project’s e xterior design—last August, Councilmember deHaan called the parking structure “butt-ugly”—the council has called in Oakland architects Komorous-Towey, specialists in art-deco restoration work and a firm that participated in the restoration of San Francisco’s City Hall. 

Komorous-Towey’s proposed changes to the exterior cineplex and parking garage design—which council approved on Tuesday night—won praise even from many speakers who oppose the overall project. 

Roma said that while the new design “does not really change the size and massing of the garage, I want to complement the architect. This is a vast improvement.” 

Kevin Frederick, an opponent to the project who said he coined the “butt-ugly” description of the proposed parking garage that deHaan later repeated, said that the “current design is way better than the previous design” and said that he was glad that the city had gotten rid of the previous project architect, whom Frederick called “a hack.” 

Praise for Komorous-Towey’s changes were echo ed by project proponents. Vice Mayor Marie Gilmore, who voted to move the project forward last August and again this week, said that she was “particularly pleased with the way the parking garage came out. We got a lot more of what we wanted, and we knew w e wanted it when we saw” what KTA had proposed. 

Citizens for a Megaplex-Free Alameda (CMFA) have also produced an alternate development plan which they say will meet the city’s goals for the restoration of the Alameda Theater as well as deal with opposit ion complaints about the approved project plan. 

CMFA’s plan would cut the number of screens in the project from seven to five, add a town plaza and other amenities, and move the parking garage to another nearby location which the group calls more appropr iate. CMFA speakers asked the council to consider their proposal. 

CMFA member Alice Ray said in a statement, “I see the alternative we are presenting as one of several that could all fit the constraints of this project. I’d be happy to support not just t his configuration but others that meet the same criteria.” 

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