{"id":313921,"date":"2026-05-13T17:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T17:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/313921\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T17:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T17:22:09","slug":"what-the-hell-is-going-on-with-las-beloved-cinerama-dome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/313921\/","title":{"rendered":"What the hell is going on with LA’s beloved Cinerama Dome?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday morning, the Los Angeles City Planning Department held a tense virtual public hearing for an ordinarily benign topic: a new conditional use permit, or CUP, application that would allow a property owner to sell alcohol consumed on-site. Dozens of Angelenos, including many people working in the film industry, turned out to voice their frustration concerning the high-profile project: the long-shuttered Cinerama Dome, a towering\u00a0icon of \u201960s-era Hollywood<\/a> and beloved theater<\/a>, that has lain empty for six years with no concrete reopening date in sight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt feels like when the Cinerama Dome is closed, it actually feels like Hollywood is dead,\u201d one resident said on the call. \u201cI believe the entire area is suffering because the\u00a0Cinerama Dome is closed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The historic Cinerama Dome was home to many a movie premiere and night out in the Hollywood neighborhood, until the pandemic forced the theater to close in 2020. Since then, Decurion Corp., the privately held company that owns the Cinerama Dome site, has remained mum about its specific plans involving the beloved complex \u2014 even as local pressure to explain the theater\u2019s long absence has ticked up.<\/p>\n

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Thus, this week\u2019s CUP hearing became a rare public forum for cinephiles and neighborhood residents to press Decurion\u2019s representative, the land use consultant Elizabeth Peterson-Gower, about what those potential reopening plans for the dome might involve.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAre they opening it again as a movie theater? When are they opening it? Why have they kept it closed?\u201d asked a local journalist, Allen Salkin, on the call. \u201cIs this just a strategy to let it rot so they can just get building violations and tear it down and build condos? There\u2019s a lot of fear about what\u2019s going to happen with this thing that people feel attached to. And to not answer questions about it over all this time has frankly been offensive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The dome of the\u00a0Cinerama theater in Hollywood was built specifically to showcase wide screen movies, shown in Los Angeles in February\u00a02010.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kirkikis\/iStock via Getty<\/p>\n

Attendees took particular issue with the application\u2019s request for a CUP \u201cin perpetuity,\u201d meaning the owners would not need to reapply for the occupancy permit that formally allows business to operate publicly. Those permits typically expire after a set period of time, allowing room for more public input \u2014 or at least a new look from the permitting department. But for the dome, a timeline for reopening has yet to materialize. \u201cI think it does smell of a way to no longer be accountable to citizens,\u201d said LA resident Danielle von Zerneck in the public hearing, adding that Peterson-Gower had not included information about the property\u2019s restoration in relation to the CUP. \u201cThe vagueness of that is deeply concerning.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2018An instantaneous icon\u2019<\/p>\n

The Cinerama Dome has been a recognizable Los Angeles icon since it first opened in 1963, with the premiere of the Long Beach-shot<\/a> \u201cIt\u2019s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.\u201d Built by the local firm Welton Becket & Associates, the same architect behind LAX\u2019s Theme Building<\/a> and the Capitol Records Building, the theater\u2019s geodesic dome design made it immediately stand out in Hollywood, said LA Conservancy President and CEO Adrian Scott Fine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While other geodesic domes were built in that era, \u201cwhat makes this one especially unique is the world\u2019s first all-concrete geodesic dome, whereas others were of metal or other types of material,\u201d Fine said. \u201cIt really hit all of the boxes in terms of making this an instantaneous icon because it was so unusual and so very different from anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Originally intended as a prototype for other theaters to showcase Cinerama widescreen technology, the dome proved cost-prohibitive to build on such a scale. In the late 1990s, the LA Conservancy helped lead a successful local advocacy effort to preserve the theater\u2019s historic facets \u2014 threatened by new construction that would obscure the dome at the street level and take out the theater\u2019s signature curved screen. Today, the Cinerama Dome is a designated historic-cultural monument.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Diana<\/p>\n

Diana Jacobs, an administrative assistant with Pacific Theatres, holds an artist\u2019s rendition of an improved\u00a0Cinerama Dome complex during a press conference in Los Angeles on\u00a0Dec. 8, 1998.<\/p>\n

Luis Sinco\/Los Angeles Times\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

For decades, the Cinerama Dome was a local favorite for filmgoers, offering various dining and drink options and reserved seating inside the theaters. The pandemic spurred its closure, but even as the world has reopened\u00a0\u2014 with other big projects opening, like Blue Note Jazz Club\u2019s Los Angeles outpost that\u2019s housed in the same complex\u00a0\u2014 the\u00a0Cinerama Dome continues to gather dust.<\/p>\n

Five years ago, a film student and filmmaker named Ben Steinberg started a petition to reopen the theater, which has garnered over 30,000 signatures. Since then, he\u2019s taken to sharing dome resources on social media through his account Save Your Cinema. \u201cHaving it sitting abandoned and literally falling apart represents the overall picture of Los Angeles,\u201d he told\u00a0SFGATE. \u201cIt\u2019s just been very frustrating to the people of LA that the owners of the complex are extremely secretive about it, and they don\u2019t issue any PR statements or respond to emails.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Earlier this year, Steinberg hired a projectionist to beam an image<\/a> of the property\u2019s owners, the Formans,\u00a0onto the defunct theater, urging them to \u201creopen the dome.\u201d\u00a0Steinberg said the Forman family called the police and that authorities warned him that the projection was a form of \u201cescalation and harassment.\u201d Steinberg has since stopped projecting images onto the dome but continues to post frequently online about its status, including Tuesday\u2019s public hearing.<\/p>\n

\u2018We want to know this area\u2019s alive\u2019<\/p>\n

Many of the public questions and comments at the forum concerned whether the property would, in fact, reopen as a public movie theater anytime in the future. Reading off a question from someone watching the hearing, Associate Zoning Administrator Tim Fargo asked Peterson-Gower: \u201cIs there any intention to remove any of the movie theaters, either now or in the future?\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cI don\u2019t have a direct answer for that,\u201d Peterson-Gower said. \u201cThe Cinerama Dome, obviously, it\u2019s a historic property. It\u2019s not going to be removed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut just to confirm, for the sake of everyone on the call, this proposal does not include any attempt to remove any of the movie theaters, correct?\u201d Fargo replied.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is correct,\u201d Peterson-Gower said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A view of parking lot behind the landmark Cinerama Dome building near Vine Street and Sunset Boulevard, which was shot on slide film in March 1981.\u00a0<\/p>\n

trekandshoot\/iStock via Getty <\/p>\n

In an interview with SFGATE before the hearing, Peterson-Gower stated that the owners have \u201cevery intention\u201d of it going back up. \u201cThey are really committed to Hollywood and making sure that all the steps are taken and that it opens and thrives,\u201d she said. When I asked Peterson-Gower to clarify if the complex will specifically reopen as a theater, instead of being redeveloped into something else, Peterson-Gower said: \u201cWe\u2019ve spent a lot of time, and they\u2019ve spent money, making sure that this property stays with the theaters and all that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The LA Conservancy has been part of discussions with the owners, Fine said, and he believes that \u201cthe intent is to reopen it.\u201d The dome\u2019s \u201ccontinued use as a theater space is part and parcel of its story,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe look at adaptive reuse all the time, but for a building like this, it really needs to be a theater to experience it as it was always intended to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Various critics<\/a> have questioned whether the aging property has remained empty so it can be written off as a tax loss. The Forman family also owns the Hollywood Pacific Theatre, which closed and never reopened as a theater after the building sustained damage during the 1994 Northridge earthquake.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the public hearing, various Angelenos worried that the conditional use permit\u2019s \u201cin perpetuity\u201d clause suggested that the dome might remain shuttered indefinitely. Many urged for its approval, with the caveat that the company would provide a timeline for its reopening. (In the meeting, Peterson-Gower said that she herself didn\u2019t \u201chave a schedule yet, but when I do, I\u2019ll convey it to you.\u201d)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Eddie Navarrette, the chief consultant of FE Design and Consulting, said that the LA City Planning Department, likely in an attempt to streamline processes, stopped putting time-restrictive terms on grants such as CUP applications during the pandemic. \u201cIt became kind of normal for these things to go on in perpetuity,\u201d he said. That said, while it may not be that unusual for a business in LA to apply for a CUP in perpetuity, \u201cthe more flexible the grant is, the farther that can can be kicked,\u201d Navarrette said.<\/p>\n

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It will take some time for the CUP to go through. Yet during the meeting, Fargo stated: \u201cIt seems like there\u2019s universal support for it reopening, so with that, I am inclined to approve.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles on Dec. 22, 2025.<\/p>\n

Jessie Alcheh\/SFGATE<\/p>\n

For Angelenos who grew up seeing movies at the Cinerama Dome, its closure and the half-decade holdup in its hopeful reopening have hit hard at a time when the city has been struggling to recover from the pandemic, wildfires and Hollywood\u2019s ongoing woes \u2014 at once in a macro sense and with the beleaguered neighborhood that shares its name.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The dome\u2019s continued absence is pushing Angelenos to seek out cinematic magic elsewhere around town. One filmmaker on the call, Xan Aranda, told a story about frequenting the dome back in the day, attending premieres and gathering huge groups of friends to hang out there. Since the dome\u2019s closure, Aranda explained that she\u2019s been going to smaller spaces like Vidiots instead, the arthouse theater\/VHS store in Eagle Rock.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI really miss the Cinerama,\u201d Aranda said. \u201cI hope that this is tied to a plan to reopen. If it\u2019s not, I don\u2019t see the point. The conditional use permit needs to be tied to a timeline, and I don\u2019t think it should be in perpetuity. We want to spend money, we want to gather, we want to have a good time. We want to know this area\u2019s alive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Tuesday morning, the Los Angeles City Planning Department held a tense virtual public hearing for an ordinarily…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,47,50,49,2008,2009],"class_list":["post-313921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-sfgla","tag-sfglaculture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}