SAN JOSE — A real estate development firm is buying the Camera 12 property in downtown San Jose, saying it intends to breathe new life into the site of the shuttered movie complex.
Campbell-based Imwalle Properties has struck a deal to buy the land beneath the movie theaters, and has reached a separate deal with Ohio-based Forest City Realty Trust to buy a ground lease to own the building, officials and executives said.
Just what will be done with the site is uncertain, although entertainment-oriented uses appear likely.
“Our preference is to find an entertainment partner that can utilize the structure and serve the downtown population,” said Don Imwalle, president of Imwalle Properties. “We want to find an entertainment use that works there.”
The land parcel will be sold to Imwalle Properties for $726,000, according to a San Jose city memo provided to this news organization. Imwalle was the highest bidder for the land, which is located at 201 S. Second St., the memo stated.
“Since Camera 12 went out of business and abandoned the premises, in September 2016, the building has been vacant,” the city memo stated. In December 2016, San Jose officials put the land on the auction block. Bids were due in March of this year.
The building features a unique three-story atrium, but that also created financial woes for the operators of the 12-screen movie house. The design of the building rendered the structure difficult to heat and cool. Plus, frequent breakdowns bedeviled the lengthy escalator.
“This is great for San Jose to have the same owner for the building and the land,” said Richard Keit, managing director of the San Jose redevelopment successor agency. “Paseo de San Antonio is so active now with downtown workers and residents, and so many San Jose State University students walk through there, that it will be fantastic to have that revitalized.”
During the several months since the theaters ran their last movies and closed the doors, the building has become shabby.
“The building has tremendous challenges and deferred maintenance,” Imwalle said.
Imwalle Properties anticipates it may have to invest well above what it’s paying for the land and the ground lease.
“We think we will have to put in at least another $7 million into the building and probably more,” Imwalle said. “But that depends on what kind of entertainment use would go in there.”
The building opened in 1996 as an eight-screen movie house known as UA Pavilion and was a companion to the adjacent Pavilion retail mall. But the Pavilion failed due to a feeble tenant mix and fierce competition from suburban malls just a few miles away. The shopping center eventually closed and became a data center in the late 1990s amid the dot-com boom. Then in 2000, the UA movies closed and the building was unused for four years.
In 2004, the owners of The Camera theater reopened the movies, with the site reconfigured for 12 screens. More problems erupted, though, primarily because downtown San Jose had yet to achieve a critical mass of residents that could patronize the cinemas at night and on weekends. This time around, the residents have arrived, but the 12-screen theater complex has gone dark.
Despite the challenges, it appears that Imwalle Properties would prefer to retain the structure and to avoid a bulldozing of the building.
“We think there is the critical mass downtown now to support entertainment in that building,” Imwalle said. “We think the Redevelopment Agency was right to put entertainment in that corridor so many years ago. We are out talking to various groups about that potential.”
