Significant restoration work coming for Rialto Theatre in South Pasadena

The historic Rialto Theatre in South Pasadena, California, soon will undergo significant interior and exterior restorations thanks to an agreement between its tenant and its landlord.

The Mosaic church group, which rents the building, will take on the interior work. The owner, Shomof Group, will work on restoring the exterior, reported the South Pasadenan.

Building owner Izek Shomof also told the South Pasadenan News that Mosaic will get a new 20-year lease for its weekend religious services. In exchange, his organization, in addition to taking over the exterior work that it can do much less expensively than Mosaic, will also be hired to complete some of the interior work and reclaim the right to lease the building’s two storefront retail spaces.
“We’re going to bring livelihood back into that space,” Shomof told the South Pasadenan News Wednesday. He predicted exterior work would be completed within four-to-six months and that new retail leases would be signed by mid-2020.
[…] Shomof Group, which bought the building five years ago for a reported $2 million, is working with the city to prepare an application for a pedestrian safety permit. That will allow Shomof to erect scaffolding on the sidewalks around the 94-year-old theater at the corner of Fair Oaks Ave. and Oxley St., enabling workers access to the building’s exterior walls and roof. […]
The proposed work includes 46 specific items grouped into 13 areas including repairs to damaged concrete and stucco walls; cast stone and plaster repairs; repairs to windows, doors, roofing, stairs, railings, copings and flashing; extensive work on the existing storefront, including restoring the marquee, blade sign, and the cracked or missing tiles in the pavement at the building’s entrance.

The Friends of the Rialto group on Facebook stated a few days after the report:

This is LONG overdue and good news for the Rialto Theatre! In short, the lease with Mosaic has been renegotiated so that the owners will be responsible for restoring the exterior and leasing the retail spaces, and Mosaic will be responsible for interior work only, some of it to be done by the owner’s team. This means restoration work will start much sooner!
It’s been difficult getting Mosaic to commit to allowing more non-church use of the Theatre, so we hope this change in responsibilities will help them do as they have said publicly. Friends of the Rialto will continue to work with all parties during the restoration and activation of the Rialto!

The Rialto Theatre, at 1023 Fair Oaks Ave., remains part of the original 1926 alignment of Route 66 in South Pasadena.

Built in 1925, the theater is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Closed in 2011, the theater deteriorated enough that part of its marquee nearly fell off, endangering motorists and pedestrians.

At one point in 2014, it appeared director Quentin Tarantino was going to buy the theater, but he backed out of the deal. Tarantino owns Los Angeles’ New Beverly Cinema, which is known far and while for its creative programming.

(Image of the Rialto Theatre in 2010 by Dean Terry via Flickr)