The Brief

The historic 100-year-old Highland Theatre in Highland Park closed its doors late last month. Many Angelenos are mourning the loss, but still holding out hope for a reopening.

This three-screen theater was one of very few movie theaters in northeast L.A., on a street that’s been gentrifying for years. Tickets used to be $10 or less, and you could regularly catch a movie for only $6 on a Tuesday or Wednesday.

It was also a cultural hub for movie lovers and filmmakers, and for the last 10 years was the home of the Highland Park Independent Film Festival.

Why it closed

Talk about the theater closing goes all the way back to 2022 with a story in The Eastsider LA about a pending sale. The 99-year lease was about to be up last February, but it stayed open.

The theater was reportedly bought by Cyrus Etemad, who also owns Highland Park Bowl and other real estate along the Figueroa Corridor in Highland Park. Etemad let the theater’s operator, Dan Akarakian, stay rent free for another year, and that year is up.

But still the news of the closure caught employees and the neighborhood by surprise.

Denise Hernandez, who works at her father’s restaurant, Antigua Bread, remembers the many times she’d eat at the restaurant before catching a movie with her little brother. “It's a core memory for us ... And I didn't even know it was leaving,” she says.

The Highland Theatre’s history

The Highland Theatre is a proper movie palace with more than 1,400 seats (that’s bigger than the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood). It opened in 1925 and was designed by the same architect who did the Vista in Los Feliz and the Rialto in South Pasadena.

The area used to be a booming theater district, but as historian and film professor Ross Melnick explains, “Today the theater is all that's left of this once booming suburban theater district. By the 1950s, demographic shifts, the rise of television and other factors began impacting local theaters.”

Highland Park's Franklin Theatre closed in 1952, the Park Theatre closed in 1963, and the Highland itself struggled into the mid 1970s.

Like many theaters at the time, in the 70s, a new owner started screening adult films as a way to stay afloat and bring in more money, but that caused protests. According to Melnick, picketers, including local nuns, carried signs reading, "Decent movies for decent people. Shame, shame, what a disgrace. Get this filth out of our face." and the Highland Theatre did close for almost a year.

In 1975, the Akarakian family bought the theater, and a few years later they changed the space from a single screen movie palace to a triplex. To do that, they closed off a vintage balcony space and reduced the capacity to about 500 seats.

In 2022, Etemad bought the theater and according to the L.A. Times, he said his priority is to preserve the venue, and is currently looking at cinema and live music uses.

And the community is hoping that that’s the case.

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Listen to the How to LA podcast: The Highland Theatre says Goodbye

#245: The Highland Theatre in Highland Park was one of the only movie theaters in Northeast LA. Now its closed. A designated historic cultural monument, the exterior will remain intact, but its future is uncertain.  In this episode, How To LA producer Victoria Alejandro chats with host Brian De Los Santos about community memories, the history of the theater, and what might be next.

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Not just a movie theater

Local filmmaker and actress Marita De La Torre, featured in the 2024 Sundance film Ponyboi, is one of the founders of the Highland Park Independent Film Festival, which has been running for the last 10 years out of the Highland Theatre.

Highland Park Independent Film Festival 2023 poster.

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Courtesy of HPIFF

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De La Torre was immediately drawn to the theater. “Give me a grand dame of a theater and I’m there,” she says. The Highland Theatre has been so beloved by the festival organizers that several team members are working on a documentary about its history.

HPIFF’s tagline is “Film For the People,” and their festival’s mission is to bring mentorship to local schools, give independent filmmakers a platform for their work, and facilitate community and networking between creatives in Northeast L.A.

De La Torre says that so many below the line and behind the scenes folks in the film industry live in Highland Park, and the community has rallied around them. Local bars like the Greyhound and the Offbeat have been major supporters. She says “we were able to survive because the community said ‘This is a good thing. This is something we want here.’”

While De La Torre isn’t sure where the fest’s home will be this fall, she’s certain they’ll find a space, and remains hopeful it might even be in the Highland Theatre again. In the meantime, they’ll be hosting free community film screenings in the nearby Tierra De La Culebra park.

Losing local movie houses

Without the Highland Theatre, Northeast L.A. is becoming more of a cinema desert. The closest first-run movie theaters are in Pasadena or Glendale, and while repertory screenings at Vidiots are just around the corner in Eagle Rock, there are no more neighborhood options.

The closure of Highland Theatre comes on the heels of other major movie theater news in the city. The Gardena Cinema’s pivot to a non-profit model and repertory screenings is what’s kept the theater running in the South Bay, and the Fox Village Theatre in Westwood survived due to major celebrity intervention.

Highland Theatre on March 7, 2024.

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Victoria Alejandro

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LAist

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Losing the theater creates a hole in the neighborhood — where once you could have gone to many of the restaurants and bars in the area before or after a movie, there’s one less light on Figueroa now.

A comeback?

In 1991, the theater was designated as a historic cultural monument by the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commision — that protects its exterior from significant changes. And that vintage balcony, original ceiling, murals, and other elements hidden on the second floor during the triplex renovation are still there, and could be part of a future restoration.

Given what the new owner Etemad has said about utilizing the theater for cinema or live music, there’s a high chance that the Highland Theatre won’t go the way of the Tower in DTLA and end up an Apple Store.

A mural on the side of Triumph Optical in Highland Park features the Highland Theatre sign.

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Victoria Alejandro

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LAist

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And with gentrifying going on in the neighborhood for years, there’s still worry that the neighborhood will keep losing cultural hubs. As Marita De La Torre says, “we're hoping that it remains a theater and that, perhaps, it is brought back to its original form.”

The Highland Theatre occupies a central spot on a bustling walkable street, packed with restaurants, bars, and the bowling alley. A movie theater seems primed to do well, with the right programming and ticket price, and if it does reopen as a theater, it’d maintain the experience of a neighborhood night-out that so many indie theaters make possible.

And for now at least, it sounds like this might be more of an intermission than an end for the Highland.

A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked California from enforcing a new law that would have banned federal immigration agents from wearing masks during immigration sweeps.

U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder ruled that the state could not enforce the facial-covering provision of SB 627, the No Secret Police Act, while a legal challenge brought by the federal government moved forward. That lawsuit argued that SB 627 conflicted with federal authority and would improperly limit how federal agents could do their jobs.

The backstory

The law banning facial coverings took effect Jan. 1 and had already sparked confusion and backlash in Los Angeles after Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell said officers would not enforce the ban. McDonnell called the law bad policy and said enforcing it could put officers and the public at risk.

McDonnell’s statements drew sharp criticism from local elected officials, the authors of the laws, and immigration law attorneys and advocates.

The federal government sued California last year, arguing that SB 627 and a second law, SB 805, known as the No Vigilantes Act, unlawfully interfered with federal immigration enforcement. SB 627 sought, in part, to make it illegal for most officers, including federal agents, to conduct law enforcement operations while wearing masks. SB 805, in part, required agents to identify themselves.

About the ruling

Snyder ruled that the mask ban inconsistently applied to some law enforcement officers and not others, which is one of the reasons why the judge temporarily blocked it.

Federal attorneys had argued that agents should be allowed to wear masks for their safety against harassment and assault, such as doxxing. Snyder disagreed, writing that while federal agents and other public figures face security risks, masks were not essential for performing their duties.

“Security concerns exist for federal law enforcement officers with and without masks,” Snyder wrote. “If anything, the Court finds that the presence of masked and unidentifiable individuals, including law enforcement, is more likely to heighten the sense of insecurity for all.”

Reaction to the ruling

One of the law’s authors, Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, announced Monday afternoon that he would be introducing new legislation aimed at revising the original law to apply to state officers it previously exempted. He characterized the ruling as a win and vowed to continue efforts to unmask federal agents.

“Now that the Court has made clear that state officers must be included, I am immediately introducing new legislation to include state officers,” Wiener said in a prepared statement, adding: “We will unmask these thugs and hold them accountable. Full stop.”

What's next

Monday’s ruling still required enforcement of SB 627 and SB 805’s remaining provisions, including that officers identify themselves. It also protected the pathway for civilians to directly sue agents for misconduct.

This temporary order will remain in effect until the federal case is resolved. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment. This story will update if it does.

A new report from L.A. County offers a closer look at the economic damage to the region caused by federal immigration enforcement — and at the neighborhoods most affected.

The analysis, compiled by the Los Angeles County Department of Economic Opportunity and Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, identified the neighborhoods hardest hit by ICE, and found that they were more economically precarious.

Researchers determined that the most targeted ZIP code in the county is 91402, which spans Mission Hills, Panorama City and North Hills in the San Fernando Valley.

The report, which was commissioned by the county Board of Supervisors, also found that many small businesses county-wide have lost revenue and customers since ICE ramped up its presence in Los Angeles last year.

The Department of Homeland Security has detained more than 10,000 people in the L.A.-area since June, according to numbers released in December. Its aggressive deportation campaign has altered daily life in Los Angeles, where nearly one in five people is undocumented or lives with someone who is undocumented.

The report lays out the ripple effect of that campaign on communities, local businesses, and workers, and its uneven influence on the region as a whole.

Vulnerable neighborhoods

The survey created an index of most vulnerable areas.

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Courtesy L.A. County Economic Development Corporation

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The report lays out the economic consequences for communities repeatedly hit by ICE sweeps.

The Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, a nonprofit research group, used census data and reports on detentions from the Los Angeles Rapid Response Network to assess how vulnerable each L.A. County ZIP code was to immigration enforcement.

Researchers looked at four other factors for each ZIP code: shares of foreign-born population from Latin America, renter households, Spanish-speaking households and non-citizen workforce.

The 10 most vulnerable ZIP codes, they determined, are primarily in working class, immigrant neighborhoods including Bell, Pico Rivera and Southeast L.A.

Researchers used employment data for the county and found that those ZIP codes were over-represented in industries, including manufacturing and retail, which have a significant number of undocumented workers. Businesses in these neighborhoods also tended to have fewer employees on average compared to the rest of the county, and employees were paid less.

"Taken together, these exhibits show that areas facing heightened immigration enforcement differ from the rest of Los Angeles County and appear more economically vulnerable," the report states.

Declined revenue, less foot traffic

Researchers also distributed a survey to small businesses county-wide to assess how federal immigration enforcement has affected the communities they operate in and their bottom lines since summer.

More than 200 small businesses responded. Most reported having fewer than 10 employees, and the majority were in industries like restaurants, retail, professional or personal services and manufacturing.

The majority of respondents — 82% — reported being negatively affected by federal immigration enforcement. Around half reported lost regular customers, less foot traffic or reduced daily sales. Around a quarter reported temporary closures due to concerns from community members.

Many surveyed business owners reported a climate of fear that has led people to stay home and avoid certain places altogether.

"Businesses reported that customers expressed fear about their location, that customers asked about safety in the neighborhood, and that customers avoided shopping or dining in their neighborhood," the report states.

Undocumented workers generate 17% of county's economic activity

No corner of Los Angeles is exempt to the ongoing immigration sweeps that have become a new reality for the region. Nearly 950,000 undocumented immigrants live in L.A. County, according to recent estimates. That's more than 9% of people in the county who lack legal status.

Undocumented workers also play a huge role in many of L.A.'s key industries. Recent research from the USC Equity Research Institute estimates that 37% of cleaning and maintenance workers and 25% of food preparation and service workers in L.A. County are undocumented.

The industry with the highest percentage of undocumented workers is construction, at 40%.

The county's undocumented population together generates just under $240 billion in economic output, according to the county's report. That's around 17% of the county's total economic activity.

The Los Angeles Unified School District rescheduled a Tuesday meeting where the board was expected to vote on layoffs as part of a larger plan to cut spending.

“The district has adjusted the date of the upcoming board meeting to ensure adequate time for preparation, public engagement, and responsible deliberation on items of significant impact and interest to our workforce and community,” an LAUSD spokesperson wrote in a statement to LAist.

They wrote the proposed reduction in force would be presented at a “future meeting.” Tuesday’s meeting is currently re-scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 17.

In a Friday letter, the unions representing LAUSD teachers, support staff and principals asked the board to delay the RIF vote until there is more information available about state funding and the public has more time to understand the proposed cuts.

“The notion that these are dark times for education requiring harmful cuts when there are record high state revenues is fearmongering,” the union letter reads.

LAUSD's financial challenges

For the last two years, the district has relied on reserves to backfill a multi-billion-dollar deficit. That deficit comes enrollment has declined steeply but expenses have not. There are more than 40% fewer students compared to the early 2000s. At the same time, as costs have increased, the district has not closed schools or significantly reduced staff. LAUSD hired more staff to support students during the pandemic, and now the federal relief dollars that initially funded those positions are gone.

The layoff vote is part of a $1.4 billion “fiscal stabilization plan.” Reductions in force are proposed for several categories including “un-funded” positions, central office staff, and at schools that support higher needs students.

LAUSD must vote on the reduction in force before March 15, the deadline for California school districts to notify staff they may be laid off.

 “It is not a foregone conclusion that people will lose jobs,” said Superintendent Alberto Carvalho at a Jan. 20 board meeting. For example, he said staff may be reassigned to vacant positions or given the opportunity to transfer to another school.

Where are the plan details?

At that same meeting, several board members pressed LAUSD staff for more details.

“When are we going to know the central office reductions? When are we going to know how many of those [there] are?” Karla Griego, a board member who represents District 5, asked, adding: “In a couple of weeks, I hope.”

“No, sooner,” responded Saman Bravo-Karimi, LAUSD's chief financial officer. Bravo-Karimi said the board would be provided with the number of positions impacted and their job classifications.

LAist requested information about the proposed layoffs last week and was told by a district spokesperson that the information would not be available until the board materials were publicly posted.

California’s Brown Act requires public agencies, including school districts, to post information about their regular meetings, including a description of each matter to be discussed, at least 72 hours in advance. Some agencies opt to publish the information even earlier.

No materials related to the Feb. 10 meeting were posted by that 72-hour deadline, and the meeting was rescheduled Sunday.

LAist reached out to Scott Schmerelson, LAUSD board president, who represents District 3, to discuss the delayed meeting. As of Monday evening Schmerelson had not responded.

Weigh in on LAUSD’s planned layoffs

The next meeting where the board could vote on the layoff proposal is Tuesday, Feb. 17. The agenda for the meeting must be publicly posted by Saturday, Feb. 14 at 10 a.m.— 72 hours before the start of the meeting. Sign up to get the agendas emailed here.