There is something quintessentially Los Angeles about the vacant building at downtown’s 251 S. Main Street.
It is the former site of the Arrow Theater and Aztec Theater, where the famed 1947 Black Dahlia murder victim Beth Short worked as a counter girl.
Reborn in the 1960s as the Linda Lea Theater for Japanese films, it was shuttered and turned into a storage facility some 20 years ago. Now, in its latest reincarnation, it is to become an Asian cultural center.
Behind the plan is ImaginAsian Entertainment Inc., which is seeking to turn the development into the flagship entertainment destination for the city’s sizeable Asian community. Movie and music festivals, live productions and other cultural events will be presented at the facility, which is slated to open in August.
The privately held company, which opened a comparable but smaller center in New York in 2004, has launched a broad range of media ventures. Among them are a nationwide television channel, radio network, a webzine, a film division and a home video unit, all of which provide various Asian-themed entertainment in Asian languages.
“As an entertainment company, our goal is to be a truly multimedia operation,” said Michael Huh, ImaginAsian’s vice president of marketing and strategic development. The L.A. center would be the hub of the firm’s theater operations.
The theater was built in the late 1920s. It is owned by Cinema Properties Group, a Costa Mesa-based company owned primarily by Sue Ann and James Kirst. The company is funding the approximate $2 million theater renovation. ImaginAsian will be a tenant and will operate the theater as a joint venture with Cinema Properties.
“We were looking at what to do with the property and really wanted it to be a successful commercial business but wanted to make the best possible use of the site,” said Sue Ann Kirst. “We always wanted it to be a restored theater but also a multi-functional building.”
Cinema Properties approached ImaginAsian about the partnership at the suggestion of the Japan External Trade Organization and the partners finalized a joint venture early this year.
“It’s not a conventional arrangement, it’s a little bit different than a lease,” Kirst said. “We want to be included in the business that they do. We want to be involved owners. We’re not in it just to flip it we want to make it something very nice and a successful business.”
Culver City architectural firm Hodgetts & Fung Design and Architecture which was behind the Hollywood Bowl and Egyptian Theater renovations is at work on the project.
The theater is near the Little Tokyo area and Gallery Row, an area that’s gaining in popularity.
“There’s starting to be sufficient mass,” said Craig Hodgetts, one of the design firm’s principals. “There are an awful lot of pieces under way and this is just one of them, but I think it will be great a destination, a fusion of culture, media and venue.”
The concept calls for the existing 7,700-square-foot structure to be gutted and replaced with a 300-seat theater and balcony, a caf & #233; with specialty Asian foods, a DJ booth in the lobby and karaoke rooms.
“ImaginAsian has an extremely urban attitude, partly because of their Asian roots, but also because they see the theater as an attracting many kinds of people,” Hodgetts said.
Media dreams
While the center is under construction, ImaginAsian is trying to establish itself as a force in the entertainment industry.
The firm reaches an estimated 14 million viewers through its cable channels in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, New Jersey, Hawaii, Houston and Las Vegas. It is currently negotiating with satellite providers to land a spot on the system’s menu of no-charge offerings.
“We do not want to be put in the ethnic ghetto, by forcing consumers to pay an additional charge for our channel,” Huh said. “We feel we should be free.”
ImaginAsian is already positioning itself as a film company. The firm bought the rights to the Korean thriller “Green Chair,” which was screened at the Sundance Film Festival last year and it hopes to build a library of foreign films.
Huh said the company is buying the expensive movies at a discount but will share revenues later with the sellers.
“It’s an immense cost, building a library,” Huh said. “It’s going to be a slow build. We’re not going to have 50 films (in our library) this year.”
In January, the company partnered with Japanese animation distributor Central Park Media Corp. to launch its ImaginAsian’s home video label.
Central Park will provide sales and warehousing services for the label, which release feature films and television dramas from the Asia Pacific region, as well as original productions.
ImaginAsian employs 75 workers in New York and a handful in Los Angeles, a number that Huh said would grow as the center nears completion. The design plans still require city approval, but Hodgetts said plans for a late summer debut are on track.
“We’re moving as fast as humanly possible,” he said. “The look will be a little bit edgy, but people like that these days.”
