BERKELEY — A historic Berkeley movie house that has been closed for years has been bought by a Los Angeles-area executive who wields an array of business interests in Southern California.
An affiliate headed up by Tien Lung Chen, a resident of the famed enclave of Beverly Hills, paid $5 million to buy the shuttered California Theatre in Berkeley, documents filed on April 20 with the Alameda County Recorder’s Office show.
Street-level view of the shuttered California Theatre movie house at 2115 Kittredge in Berkeley, as seen in June 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
The Chen-led group bought the old movie theater at 2115 Kittredge St. in Berkeley through an all-cash deal, according to the county real estate files.
The California Theatre closed its doors in 2021, one of the multitude of economic casualties doomed by the coronavirus in the Bay Area and worldwide.
The theater’s future has been murky ever since.
In 2022, Gilbane Development proposed the development of a housing tower on the site along with a transformation of the ground floor into a performing arts venue.
The proposal would have preserved the movie theater’s facade and potentially some of the interior sections of the former cinema.
In 2025, however, Gilbane Development pulled out of the project, an abrupt exit that effectively scuttled the plans for the housing tower and the movie theater’s revamp.
Chen, a key figure in the affiliate that bought the California Theatre property, is linked to the ownership group for Exotic Dreams Resort, official state business records show.
The Exotic Dreams Resort is a clothing-optional swingers hotel in Palm Springs, an upscale getaway destination in the Coachella Valley.
In September 2025, a Chen-led group paid $11 million for a Pasadena property, documents on file in Los Angeles County show. The Pasadena property is described as a potential development site.
Alameda County and state government documents show that Chen receives correspondence, including property tax bills, at a Beverly Hills single-family home that is valued at $4.4 million. A Chen-led affiliate paid $4 million for that home in 2019.
It wasn’t immediately clear what plans Chen might have for the California Theatre movie house in Berkeley.