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Los Angeles

Jamison puts historic Westlake Theatre on the market

Listing plays up burgeoning neighborhood plus the unique 2,000-seat movie palace

A photo illustration of Jamison Properties' Jaime Lee and Westlake Theatre (Getty, LinkedIn/Jaime Lee, Visitor7, CC BY-SA 3.0 - via Wikimedia Commons)
A photo illustration of Jamison Properties' Jaime Lee and Westlake Theatre (Getty, LinkedIn/Jaime Lee, Visitor7, CC BY-SA 3.0 - via Wikimedia Commons)

The preeminent Koreatown developer and landlord Jamison Properties wants to sell the Westlake Theatre, a historic building near MacArthur Park the firm picked up several years ago for a potential redevelopment. 

The listing, held by CBRE, showed up within the last week and markets the property as either multi-tenant retail or an adaptive reuse opportunity. The listing is unpriced and plays up both the burgeoning Westlake submarket and the unique nature of the old movie palace. Part of the building was originally built in 1925, and it’s now recognized both as a City of Los Angeles historic monument and on the National Register of Historic Places. 

“This building … has a Classical design hierarchy, infused with Assyrian motifs and theatrical whimsy,” the listing states. “Many of the original design elements remain intact, including the Art Deco ticket booth (added in 1935) and much of the interior.”

The half-acre site is located at 634-640 South Alvarado Street, on the east side of MacArthur Park near the Westlake/MacArthur Park Metro station.

It’s in the middle of one of L.A.’s most densely populated neighborhoods, as well as one that has seen a recent plethora of multifamily developments as the area is relatively cheap by L.A. standards. In March, two developers each filed plans for six-story apartment projects in the neighborhood, and last year project plans in the area included proposals for a two-building, 238-unit complex and an eight-story complex that would rise in place of an auto repair shop and flower kiosk. 

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More than 1,000 units spread across 17 projects are currently under construction in the neighborhood, according to the CBRE listing. 

After first opening in the 1920s, the roughly 2,000-seat venue operated for decades as a movie theater and playhouse, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy. In recent years the building has served as a swap meet.  

Jamison, a family-run firm that ranks as both one of L.A.’s largest landlords and among its busiest developers, bought the historic site in 2018 for $2 million from the city’s redevelopment agency. The company then took on multiple rounds of financing, according to property records, but has apparently tabled plans for a redevelopment.

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The company did not respond to a request for comment, but it could be looking for additional cash to help with other development projects. After making a notable multifamily development push in and out of Koreatown through the pandemic, the firm still has its eye on other major projects. 

In the past few weeks the firm has filed plans for one major office-to-residential conversion in the Westside neighborhood of Carthay and another that would convert the 33-story former ARCO Tower, in Downtown L.A., into nearly 700 apartments. 

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JamisonMacarthur Park