Posted by justdontunderstand, a resident of the Menlo Park: Downtown neighborhood, on Jan 21, 2007 at 10:55 am

The shoddy appearance that this abandoned theatre presents there days is dreadful.

The City should pass an ordinance requiring the owner to keep a building like this in descent repair so that it outwardly at least is not a blight to the surrounding structures. It was suggested that perhaps a vacancy tax should be levied on owners of abandoned structures like these to get them motivated into re-building or re-leasing. A good idea.

In any case, this is not a building worthy of any historic interest, in spite of what some council members may think. It should be torn down eventually and replaced by something useful as part of a grander El Camino corridor study.

Why the city council wants to waste their time studying this structure is beyond me.

Posted by TryThisOnForSize, a resident of the Menlo Park: Downtown neighborhood, on Jan 21, 2007 at 7:40 pm

Perhaps the building should be left to stand as an ode to greedy capitalism, as Howard Crittenden kicked out a perfectly good, rent-paying tenant, immediately cut down its distinctive sign (and probably destroyed it afterwards) and left it to rot in the hopes that he could make a killing like all the other developers were doing during the previous council's reign with an office conversion. Instead, it merely ended up serving as a mighty appropriate symbol on an election “hit piece” that helped to oust the former majority. How wonderfully ironic.