David Berger is making his dream come true. It’s a very, very expensive dream, but it’s one that will be a huge gift for Ojai, and Ventura County as a whole.
The businessman spent more than four years, and $10 million restoring, renovating, and modernizing the historic Ojai Playhouse, the community’s long shuttered 110 year old movie theater.
"I just want to do something that's larger than life, and affect people in a positive way" said Berger. "The intention is to reconnect community, support the arts, and artists, shed positivity and creativity, and reflect the nature of Ojai. I had some success in my life, and I wanted to do something meaningful."
The theater has been closed since 2014, when it was hit by a flood. Berger bought it in 2020.
He worked with a team of experts to not only restore this historic 200 seat theater, but to give it state of the art projection, sound, and lighting systems.
"A mix of past, present, and future. The outside is very beautiful, and monochromatic, and simple, and likes to capture its Mission Revival essence," said Berger. "But inside are glowing lights, and high tech sound, and high grade projection."
There's ceiling lighting which can be changed in color to match the mood of the event, and custom theater seats made in Spain.
Architect Bob Kupiec said the idea was to reflect the theater’s history while incorporating the latest theater technology.
"The building has been here forever, It was built at the turn of the century. It showed silent movies," said Kupiec. "So, it has a history of being here in Ojai for over a century. As you can see, we did a restoration of the exterior in a neoclassic style. It fits Ojai. We wanted the exterior of the building to fit into the community like it always has, but we redid a few things that were not so nice. We put a new marquee up, and we restored the building so it is seismically safe."
The architect said one of the real challenges was creating acoustic, sound, and lighting systems which would allow the building to serve as a first class theater, and a live music performance venue.
"A theater really wants to be a dead box, and we've now designed the building so it can have live performances. The acousticians did a great job of just sneaking in between both requirements."
Chris Speer, with New Media Hollywood, said the answer they came up with is two separate, high tech sound systems: one for movies, and one for live performances.
"In order for it to be a movie theater, it has to be fairly quiet, with no echoes. But for live, you need a warm room where there is resonance and reverberation. David had us put in a separate system so you can crank up the warmth, and the liveness of the room."
The result is a theater which the team said will rival some of the best screening rooms in Hollywood. But, this is open to the public.
Berger said he’s hoping the theater will be a gathering spot for the community, with its mix of classic, art house and family movies and live shows.
The theater officially opened Friday, with a sold out screening of the 1995 Michael Mann drama “Heat” which starred Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro. They added a second, late night showing.
Then, the weekend was a mix of potential Oscar contenders, art house classics, and some family films.
Berger says after more than four years of work, it’s exciting to be able to reopen the theater’s doors to the community for the first time.
"This is my Field of Dreams. Everyone has a Field of Dreams. This is my version," he said.
