Hollywood Romance: A Mixed-Use Project Helps Preserve a Golden Age Cinema

The Hollywood Theatre has a long history in Kitsilano. One of 26 single-screen cinemas in the city of Vancouver at the time it opened in 1935, the Hollywood was owned and operated by four generations of the Fairleigh family over a span of 76 years until it shuttered in 2011 and was sold to local developer Bonnis Properties.

The building sat empty for over a year before being leased to a church group in 2012. When that lease expired in 2013, Bonnis proposed to demolish the site and redevelop it as a two-storey fitness facility, but faced opposition from local community groups who lobbied the city to offer incentives to the developer to keep the Hollywood open as a community arts space. The redevelopment plans were eventually scuttled, and the theatre again lay dormant while its owners consulted with the city and local community as to what its future might be.

Fast forward 10 years and the Hollywood has now been lovingly restored to its former glory as a 650-seat, single-screen cinema and performing arts venue. Next door, a mixed-use development featuring 40 rental apartments and three street-level retail units was completed in 2022. The Bonnis-owned Hollywood Theatre and Residences, as the building is now known, includes both the heritage-designated cultural venue and the new mixed-use development. It serves as an example of how revitalizing a heritage property can benefit both the developer of the project and the local community.

MA+HG Architects, who oversaw both the restoration of the Hollywood Theatre and the design of the new mixed-use building next door, were recently recognized by the BC Heritage Awards and the Vancouver Heritage Awards for their work preserving the Hollywood.

Marianne Amodio, founding principal at MA+HG, told LoopNet that the firm was brought on early to help the owners come up with a plan that would address concerns from a diverse group of stakeholders.

“We did a lot of advocacy before we did the architecture,” Amodio said. “During the beginning stages of the project we were designing, but sort of in tandem while we were having all these meetings with the city, the heritage community, the film community and the arts community to establish common goals for the work. We really needed buy-in from everybody.”

Amodio said that what ultimately allowed the preservation to take place was a 2018 heritage revitalization agreement (HRA) between the owners and the city of Vancouver. The HRA enabled an increase to the permitted density and building height on the empty lot next to the theatre as an incentive for the heritage designation and preservation of the theatre itself.

“[The HRA] was the mechanism that allowed the project to move forward,” Amodio said. “The density that you could build on [the theatre] site was simply transferred over to the site next door so that the Hollywood could remain intact in its original condition.”

While the transferred density was relatively minimal, it was enough to get the project to stack financially and bolstered the preservation effort. Adding to the complexity of the project was the fact that the HRA stipulated that not only must the building’s unique physical aspects be preserved, but its “intangible cultural use” as a cinema should also be protected.

“It's not just about how it looks on the outside or the interior, it's about what it can actually do,” said Kristen Lambertson, a planner at the City of Vancouver’s cultural services department, whose “Making Space for Arts and Culture” program helped coordinate the effort to preserve the Hollywood.

Lambertson told LoopNet that different community groups each had their own view of how the theatre should be used, but that an avid contingency was particularly focused on preserving its original capacity as a space for film projections.

“That was probably one of the most challenging parts about the project,” Amodio said. “Because a single screen theater is just frankly not a super viable business model.”

In the end, a pair of veteran local promoters were brought on to operate the Hollywood as a for-profit single-screen cinema and event venue available for rent for live music performances, comedy, theatre and movie screenings, as well as hosting corporate, private and non-profit events and functions.

“The project really started to move forward when the owner found an operator for the theater,” Amodio said. “As soon as that use was established, that's really when the project got its legs and took off.”

A community use agreement was also put in place to provide access to local non-profit arts and culture organizations on a cost recovery basis. “It's great that there are these spaces that are owned by private entities, but that still provide that element of community access,” Lambertson said.

Designed by architect Harold Cullerne in the 1930s, the Hollywood Theatre is a classic example of the Art Deco style that dominated Jazz Age architecture, featuring an undulating façade, roofline hieroglyphic decorations, inset scrolled figures, a frameless glass ticket booth with black and gold tiles and a prominent marquee with neon signage.

Amodio said one of the first steps of the planning process was to outline the scope of the restoration and renovation of the theatre building. To that end, MA+HG enlisted heritage consultants Donald Luxton and Associates to advise them on the best way to proceed.

When it came to renovating the lobby, the team were committed to retaining and restoring as many original elements as possible, including the plaster ceiling, wood wainscoting and heritage signage. Some rope detailing was also retained and much of the original lighting was either restored or replicated, including the exterior neon signage. Meanwhile, the theatre’s new operators, David Hawkes and Sean Mawhinney, pitched in to help reupholster all the original seating.

“It doesn't look like a lot happened in the theater, but it was a massive renovation,” Amodio said.

Once the heritage elements were taken care of, the theatre needed to be upgraded to modern specifications to be able to accommodate its new vocation as a mixed-use performance venue. New mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) infrastructure was installed, as well as a new sprinkler system and state-of-the-art lighting and sound systems. The space also required several new accessible washrooms to satisfy modern building codes for the expected occupant load.

As is the case for many single-screen cinemas, the space featured a long, sloped floor, so the team installed a removable flat platform that houses two bars at the back of the space to complement the concession stand in the lobby.

“That really is the mechanism that allows for the multiplicity of use,” Amodio said. “They can hold events, they can have lectures, it can operate as a bar and they can also bring the seats back in for movies.”

The new mixed-use building next door to the theatre features 4,423 square feet (411 square meters) of street-level retail space beneath five floors of residential units. It also has two levels of underground parking.

“The thing about the building next door and the Hollywood Theater is that one doesn't exist without the other,” Amodio said. “The building next door is a vehicle for the preservation of the heritage building [and] is really meant to honor the Hollywood.”

The two buildings are even considered as a single site from a technical point of view, Amodio said. She credited the city’s planning, engineering and building review departments with accomplishing the “huge feat” of reorganizing permissions to accommodate the preservation effort and ensure timely delivery of the new mixed-use development.

“The city was really eager to get the Hollywood Theatre open, so we did the development permit as one permit, but then we were able to split the theatre off into a separate building permit,” she said. “That allowed us to be permitting and renovating the theatre while we were working on the drawings for the building next door.”

Throughout the review process, the architects made incremental alterations to the new building’s form and massing to accommodate shadowing concerns from residents behind it to the north. The building’s footprint was also pushed back from the street, “in deference to the theater”, Amodio said. The added ground plane space serves as a patio area for the street-level retail tenants.

The building’s 40 residential units range from studio to 3-bedroom/2-bath, with shared rooftop deck amenities that offer spectacular views of the North Shore Mountains. All units have deep balconies that run not only along the north and south façades, but also overhang the theatre to the east, ensuring nothing else will be built above the heritage building.

“We wanted it to be really beautiful and simple from the street,” Amodio said of the building’s distinctive black-and-white horizontal banding, a nod to the vertical bands on the Hollywood next door.

While the Hollywood Theatre and Residences was officially completed in 2022, the theatre itself has been operating since shortly after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and now has a full schedule of musical acts, variety shows, comedians and film screenings.

“It was a bit of a slow burn on the theater because it opened during COVID,” Amodio said. “But I was there recently, and it was packed, which is amazing. That was always our vision for it — that there would be just a lot of people in the space, enjoying it.”