Dig a hole: Landmark La Jolla Village

Another temple of cinema bites the dust. It’s with a great deal of both frustration and consternation that I bring news of the pending demolition of the Landmark La Jolla Village to make way for another high-profile discount schmate outlet.

This makes a total of five Landmark screens to go under in the 15 years I’ve been calling San Diego my home. Remember La Jolla’s single-screen Cove Theatre? It became, in 2002, a furniture store. Subtract four more auditoriums, with 1149 seats, when the La Jolla Village shutters its doors. Still standing: the five screens at Landmark’s Hillcrest location and Kensington’s venerable single-screen, the Ken Cinema.

A change took place not long after Arclight — with its fashionable stadium seating, “black box” technology, and top ticket price of $18.50 [and real butter on the popcorn! — Ed.] — moved to UTC in 2012. Defying whatever logic that is known to exist in contemporary booking patterns, it was a Landmark art house, not the AMC multiplex across the way, that, along with Arclight, opened the decidedly mainstream The Hobbit.

I’m guessing the chain was banking on students (and seniors) who had no interest in paying upwards of $20 to watch a film in 3D. (None of the screens at La Jolla Village were outfitted for 3D.) The experiment eventually died off, and of late, the theater was back showing art-house fare.

According to the Union-Tribune, the quad is poised to fade to black in August. Coming soon: a Nordstrom Rack. Thanks for all the great years of service.

One door closes, another opens. Hopefully you LJ Village stalwarts (and more) will find a new home when the Reading Cinema Carmel Mountain becomes the Angelika Film Center later this year.