Cinerama Dome Advocates Take Rare Chance to Put Public Pressure on Owners to Reopen

When will the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood reopen? Not today, but everyone who has that question at least got a chance this morning to voice their concerns that the historic movie venue has remained closed for so long.

On Tuesday, May 12, Los Angeles City held a public hearing held by the city’s Associate Zoning Administrator to grant a conditional use permit to sell alcohol at the Cinerama Dome and the accompanying theater complex located in Hollywood. It is a rare sign of life for the venue, which has been shuttered since the pandemic in 2020 and after Arclight Theaters and parent Pacific Theaters ceased operations, especially after past timelines to reopen the Cinerama Dome have been pushed back on numerous occasions.

But with the Dome’s owners Decurion and its commercial real estate agency Robertson Properties Group being press shy and publicly quiet over the years, community advocates and supporters of the Dome seized on even this small opportunity to address the ownership group’s reps out in the open. (Decurion’s CEO is Chris Forman, son of Pacific Theaters founder William Forman, who built the Cinerama Dome in 1963.)

The hearing was limited to whether Decurion should be granted this specific conditional use permit, but that did not stop numerous public commenters in a Zoom call Tuesday from letting them know their frustration.

“It feels like when the Cinerama Dome is closed, it actually feels like Hollywood is dead,” one community speaker who addressed himself as M.W.O. said on the call.

“Everybody knows the entertainment industry, the film industry, is in a difficult situation in Los Angeles right now. We’re losing jobs. On top of that, the Hollywood area is struggling. There are many businesses that are closing,” another unidentified speaker said. “The Cinerama Dome is an iconic piece of architecture, a historic cultural monument. It would go a long way toward restoring the vibrancy of the Hollywood area.”

Elizabeth Gower, a representative for the Dome’s ownership group, opened the call with a brief presentation about the venue and a request that a liquor license be granted in perpetuity, as the company’s current permit with the city was set to expire. Gower said the approval of the conditional use permit would help ensure the complex can reopen in the future, but did not provide a timeline for the reopening.

Gower noted the opening of Blue Note Jazz Club in the same complex in 2025 as evidence that another business is successfully operating in the area and would help the community if the Dome’s opening were to join it. In response to a question from Zoning Administrator Tim Fargo, Gower said the COVID-19 pandemic was the main reason the site has remained closed.

That’s when the call was opened up to public comment. Like any public hearing, there were a few jokers who had some strange outbursts, but the majority of the over a dozen speakers weren’t satisfied with Gower’s presentation and used their times to ask questions of the owners as to what has taken so long with this project.

Some of the speakers included local community members, filmmakers, journalists, and even Kat Kramer, daughter of filmmaker Stanley Kramer and the director of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” which was the first movie to be screened at the Dome in the Cinerama format that bares its name.

As several speakers noted, many of Pacific Theaters and Arclight’s other venues have been acquired by other theater chains and reopened while the Dome has remained dormant. Callers also noted more recent reporting in 2025 from THR, TheWrap, and elsewhere that Decurion has received several offers to acquire the entire complex, but Decurion has not entertained those offers or made the Cinerama Dome itself available.

“When Elizabeth Gower said that COVID is what has kept it shut, that was initially, of course, correct, but not currently, and by not having anything in the presentation talking about a restoration of the business as part of the use of this liquor license, the vagueness of that is deeply concerning,” a speaker named Danielle von Zerneck said.

Several of the speakers objected to Gower’s request that a license be granted “in perpetuity.” Many said a license should only be granted under the condition that specific timelines for reopening the Dome are set. Some even floated a fear that by granting a liquor license, it allows Decurion to further delay and avoid further public comment and instead called on the Forman family to host another in-person public forum to address community members’ concerns and to lay out their plans for the space.

“When are they opening it? Why have they kept it closed? Is this just a strategy to let it rot so that they can get building violations and just tear it down and build condos,” one journalist named Alan S. said on the call. “There’s a lot of fear about what’s gonna happen with this thing that people feel attached to, and to not answer questions over all this time has, frankly, been offensive.”

Fargo clarified that granting a license in perpetuity has become the city standard, but it comes with the stipulation that if the permit is not used within three years that the recipient would have to apply again in another public setting. He also clarified that while this hearing was on behalf of a conditional usage permit, the Alcoholic Beverage Control of Los Angeles is the body that officially grants the license, and some of their policies dictate why a conditional timeline on a reopening date can’t also be put in place.

The large number of public speakers at the event was facilitated through a Partiful event invite circulated by activist Ben Steinberg, who has spent the past several years leading a grassroots effort to get the Cinerama Dome reopened and demand questions from Decurion. It has involved a popular social media account dedicated to the cause and a petition that attracted 30,000 signatures. He has been openly critical of the Forman family and considers the historic theater’s closure to be civic abandonment.

Last month, Steinberg staged a protest in which he projected images on the venue specifically calling on Forman to “REOPEN THE DOME.” The move drew the response of the LAPD, which informed him that the Forman family considered it harassment and wanted the public protest shut down, to which he complied. Steinberg did appear on the call on Tuesday and asked if the tiling on the theater, which has been tagged with graffiti, would be restored.

Gower was given some time at the end of the call to broadly address all the concerns, and she additionally clarified that while she has no schedule, she will convey the request to the owners about an additional community meeting. She added the plan is for the complex to retain all its movie theater screens, and that the Cinerama Dome signage will remain and intends to be restored.

“I understand the frustration with the timing. Having owned a lot of businesses in the area and in downtown, it’s not just COVID and the end of COVID, it’s a lot to bring things back up,” Gower said. “This is a historic monument. It is here in perpetuity. It is responsible for meeting all the historic components, restoring the tile, all of this, and of course the Cinerama Dome will stay in place, and I think they’re just trying to make sure that it is successful.”