The Watts district of South Los Angeles could see a ground-breaking on a state-of-the-art theater and training center in the heart of their community as soon as this summer, according to Barbara Stanton, who recently gave a crowd of residents and others an update on the project.
Stanton is the executive director of the Watts Cinema and Education Center Inc., and she's been pursuing efforts to create the Wattstar Theatre and Education Center for years. Now she has $10 million in funding and is ready to begin — progress that provided the basis for the February 18 town hall meeting at the Ted Watkins Memorial Park gymnasium.
The center will be located on 1.66 acres of "blighted" land stretching along Graham Avenue between 103rd and 107th streets, where its programs and facilities will aim to serve residents within a 5-mile radius. It will consist of a full-service movie theater with four screens and 1,000 stadium-style seats. Its education and training facility will house 34 rooms and a security substation that will work in conjunction with the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, which patrols the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's operations, including a Blue Line light-rail station near the proposed theater site.
The theater alone would mark quite a turn for the neighborhood. It has been nearly 45 years since the last theater in Watts burned down during the 1965 Watts Rebellion. To experience a standard theater experience, residents currently have to drive miles outside of their community. For youth and others without transportation, two buses are often needed to get to a theater.
The classrooms and labs add another dimension to the project. Stanton said plans call for them to host programs to train youth in video/film production, post-production, animation, music editing, Internet design, and business development or expansion. There will also be a teleconference and distance learning center that will help youth from Watts connect with counterparts in other parts of the world.
The project is expected to create 60 jobs altogether, although Stanton said that it also holds the potential to spur more employment opportunities by drawing restaurants and other businesses to the community.
"A major challenge has been overcoming the negative stigma that Watts doesn't need, nor deserve, anything but social services," Stanton said shortly after the town hall meeting.
There have been plenty of other obstacles, too.
Stanton said the concept of the plan was solid enough to earn the backing of corporate giants such as Warner Bros. Entertainment, Disney and other proven names whose representatives had agreed to train staff. But "convincing the bureaucrats that the project was feasible and would be self-sustaining was also a barrier," according to Stanton.
"The land on which we're building had to be part of it, so we took a piece of land that no one was using — that was, for lack of a better term, blighted," Stanton said. "And now we're turning it into completion of a Watts civic center and entertainment center that we've needed for 40 to 50 years."
Stanton said another challenge for the project was getting private funding, but after some eight years of writing to — and being rejected by — the foundation world, Wattstar received its first million dollars from the Annenberg Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to "works to advance public well-being through improved communication."
"All the naysayers, when you get a million dollars, they look at it differently," Stanton said. "But one of the best feelings, accomplishments in the world, was being able to prove that the four theaters [can] generate enough income so that we can service our debt and pay all of our bills and have almost a half a million dollars left over for our own programs."
The planners have also received $2 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce, and $2.25 million of Community Development Block Grant funds from the City of L.A., she said. Stanton added that $13 million of the $23 million project will come from the Industrial Development Authority, a bond financing source with the City of L.A.'s Community Development Department.
The theater could open as soon as September 2011, according to Stanton, who had the chance to provide the recent overview to a number of public officials who joined community members at the town hall, including L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas.
Ronald Jackson, a local community artist, said he has always believed the Wattstar project was a great idea. He also expressed concern, however, about the theater's close proximity to train tracks, and whether it would be sound enough to withstand the vibrations.
Jackson also wondered if or how the complex's new parking stalls and necessary street conversion would impede traffic. Those questions and others were satisfied during the town hall meeting, he said.
"If they actually build it and people patronize the movie theater and the educational level, get the training, get the jobs available in that line, that will be a great thing because we have been excluded in the production of filmmaking and things of that nature that take place in Hollywood and all over L.A.," Jackson said. "So I think given that opportunity, it can be good, if it's done the way it's said."
Earl Gales, chairman and CEO of Jenkins/Gales & Martinez Inc. (JGM), architects for the project, said that the project is dear to him because he grew up in Watts, on Graham Avenue. Gales said he remembers when he and his brother traveled Downtown to go to the closest theater available.
"This will be one of my best projects that we have ever worked on," Gales told the crowd at the town hall.
Charlene Muhammad is a writer for the L.A. Watts Times.
Image from www.wattstar.com.
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