On a lousy morning for all earthlings except ducks and girls who peddle rain gear, the grand re-opening of the venerable Vets Auditorium was staged before a peppy crowd of civic-minded leaders and untitled residents who huddled in the brightly lighted lobby.
The 61-year-old Vets was closed for three months while undergoing nearly a half-million dollars’ worth of wide-ranging renovations that were more subtle than obvious.
Parks and Recreation Director Daniel Hernandez, as master of ceremonies, ushered in the golden moment that also was overseen by four members of the new City Council – just re-elected Mayor Mehaul O’Leary, just re-elected incumbent Andy Weissman, Election Night’s top votegetter, just-elected freshman member Jim Clarke and holdover Jeff Cooper, who observed the recent campaign from the sidelines.
The retooled Vets now offers a brighter and safer environment, Mr. Hernandez said. He hopes the expensive update will pump a fresh splash of energy into the old girl and help attract new business, not only from hometown groups looking for meeting grounds but out-of-town convention groups as well.
For Messrs. Weissman and Cooper, the old building cradles sentimental memories.
“This is such a terrific facility,” Mr. Weissman said. “You don’t realize how well used it is until it closes down.
“I have memories going back decades.
“My high school graduation and Grad Night party were here in 1968. High Holiday services have been held here since the ‘50s. It has been 25 years since my wife Doneil and I were married on the floor of the auditorium.
All in the Family
“For years, my mother-in-law, Dorothy Kinnon, was the caterer extraordinaire for all of the events at Vets, through the1970s and nearly all of the ‘80s.”
The effervescent Mr. Cooper explained that his introduction to the Vets Auditorium came in 1985, at his college graduation. “We had our graduation party here,” he said, “and who knew, years later, I would be involved in the community, as a Parks and Recreation Commissioner for 10 years prior to being on the Council?”
The Vets has been a fixture as long as most residents have been alive – built in 1950 and officially opened in 1951, says historian Julie Lugo Cerra, six years after the war, when the Chamber of Commerce installed now long-gone officers.
“The Vets was built concurrently with The Plunge,” Ms. Lugo Cerra said this morning. “At that time, the Chamber of Commerce offices were in what we now know as the Rotunda Room,” just off the lobby, near the main entrance.
Those Were the Days
How many yesterdays ago was it?
The former parkland – known as Exposition Park, a popular coupling in the first half of the 20th century – was built, Ms. Lugo Cerra said, when the community actually boasted, confessionally, in its signage, “Culver City, Where Hollywood Movies Are Made.”
Why was it built?
“To be a community center,” said Ms. Lugo Cerra, “and it also had a movie museum.”
Long ago the museum disappeared. Within the last year, activists have been trying to create a groundswell of interest in a revival. If there is momentum, it is invisible.
“Sure, it was,” Ms. Lugo Cerra said to the question of whether putting up the Vets was a popular undertaking in those early postwar years. “The city started acquiring the land in 1938 as Exposition Park,” she said.”They saw it as a park and a complex that would serve the locals,” which, happily, is the way it has turned out.
“The tower was built so you could look out and see the MGM lot, a backlot across the street, where the Senior Center is now. The backlot included Andy Hardy Street, New York’s Lower Eastside streets, and a triangular building that had a hospital on one side, a courthouse on another, and a city hall on another. It was always used, left and then re-faced for whatever was needed next.”
Ms. Lugo Cerra said that MGM, ubiquitous though it was, did not surround the Vets.
“They had the two movie lots across the street,” she said, “and the main lot where it is today, 40-some acres. In the 1930s, they acquired the backlots across the street. Also in the ‘30s, they went down Overland and bought four other lots. At one time, MGM had a total of 187 acres.”
