Palm Springs city council moves forward with restoring Plaza Theatre

The Plaza Theatre in Palm Springs could eventually re-open its doors again after 4 years. The city is moving forward on plans to have a new owner renovate the venue.

What was once a bustling theater is now sitting empty, the box office of the plaza theater in Palm Springs boarded up. This vacancy could be thing of the past however, with the city of Palm Springs looking to restore the historic building.…

“The place is magical, it’s like going into the Pantages in Los Angeles but on a small scale,” Mayor Robert Moon said.

The city council voted unanimously Wednesday night to move forward with a plan, to hire a contractor to look at the theater. They would evaluate the costs of renovation to give a clearer picture for anyone interested in setting up there. The theater has sat empty since 2014 when the show, the palm springs follies, closed.

“People are hesitant to take it on if they don’t exactly know what needs to be done or how much that would cost. So having the scope of work and the estimated cost, we can get requests for proposals,” Mayor Moon said. He noted there were already several interested parties.

The vote was welcome news for Debby Alexander, the owner of Peabody’s Cafe. She specifically set up her shop to draw the theater crowd next door over 20 years ago. Alexander says her business went down 20 percent a year after the theater closed.

“800 people twice a day going in and out. That was a big thing, that was like shutting off a faucet when the Plaza theater basically closed,” she said.

While her business has recovered over time, Alexander says it’s important to have the theater re-open to continue drawing the entertainment crowd, and creating more foot traffic.

“I would like to see something that both draws tourists and locals, so to get that you’d have to have something that changed a couple times during the season, like a Branson theme,” she said.

“It has a lot of sentimentality to people who’ve lived in Palm Springs for a long time,” Mayor Moon said.

It’s nostalgia that could soon return to the downtown Palm Springs area.

The agenda item can be found here.