This month, a new phase of construction will break ground at the historic Fox Theatre in Fullerton, work its restorers hope will get the former movie house’s doors open regularly again for the first time in decades.

New bathrooms and air conditioning systems will be installed in the nearly 100-year-old building. Also, electrical upgrades will help improve operations, which are currently “running on a very limited amount a power,” said Brian Newell, president of the Fullerton Historic Theatre Foundation, which has dedicated hundreds of man hours and raised millions of dollars over the last more than 15 years for the restoration effort.

A new concession stand and lobby doors will soon welcome visitors.

The goal is to fix up the theater enough to obtain an occupancy permit, Newell said, which will allow the place to open regularly without needing to apply for daily permits to hold each event. The theater has hosted select special events and screenings since 2012, all the while restoration work was taking place.

This latest construction push will complete the “dirty work,” as Newell refers to it – “all the stuff that is hard to look at,” or that you can’t see at all.

“There’s a lot of moving parts and it just takes a long time, but it’s happening,” Newell said.

The first leg of actual construction work at the theater, which started in 2010 after a few years of just cleaning up the abandoned building, “was all about safety,” Newell said.

That included performing seismic retrofitting to prepare the place for earthquakes, foundation work, putting in fire sprinklers and constructing support for the balcony.

Getting to this point has been a feat for the volunteers working to restore the beloved theater, which opened in 1925 as a silent-movie palace and vaudeville theater. One of the biggest obstacles has being funding.

The Fox, which closed in the 1987, was spared from demolition when it was purchased in 2004 by the foundation with help from the city of Fullerton and donors, including one anonymous benefactor who contributed more than $1 million at the last minute.

The first phase of construction was funded with $6 million from the city, Newell said, but the project went over budget. The foundation sought out grants for some of the work, like restoring the original artwork on the interior ceiling and wall over the stage, he said.

“From that point on began the process of figuring out what it was going to cost and how to raise some funds to finish and complete the project,” Newell said. “And the numbers that were coming in were staggering.”

The all-in cost to finish the work was about $20 million, he said.

That’s when the theater’s owners decided to take another approach, focusing first on obtaining the occupancy permit, with the hope that hosting regular events at the theater would provide more fundraising opportunities to complete the remaining work. Still to be done: Restoring the original murals in the building, updating the seating, reviving the grand staircase and balcony, and implementing new lighting and technical stage features.

With a $2.5 million grant from the state in 2018, secured by Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva, the Fox’s leaders were planning Phase 2 when the pandemic delayed progress and ballooned the price of construction goods, Newell said, “so the number that we were working with before is not the realistic number.”

The foundation is moving ahead with its Phase 2 plans despite being short of the expected $4.8 million cost, so fundraising will be crucial.

Newell said fundraising efforts gained momentum under the helm of Steve Forry, brought on last year as executive director for the board. Forry died in February after only a few months in the role.

“He really picked up the fundraising portion of the project. He really brought it to a new level that it had never been up before,” Newell said. “And we don’t want to lose that momentum that he worked so hard on.”

The group is hoping to complete Phase 2 by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, a developer’s plan to turn the buildings on the block surrounding the Fox into a food hall similar to the Anaheim Packing House is moving forward, with the project expected to go to Fullerton’s Planning Commission and City Council by December, said Kellee Fritzal, the city’s deputy director of community and economic development.

The developer behind the project, San Juan Capistrano-based Frontier Real Estate Investments, has submitted preliminary plans to the city, which staff reviewed, and the group is performing soil testing now on the site, Fritzal said.

Related Articles