The City Council recently approved an ambitious plan to convert the 1,021-seat Doolittle Theatre in Hollywood into a Latino-oriented performance center. Under the council plan, the city's Community Redevelopment Agency will buy the theatre from owner UCLA for $2.1 million and then convey it to Regent Properties, a real estate and investment firm retained by Ricardo Montalban-Nosotros Foundation. The city's redevelopment agency will form a partnership with Regent to build a shopping center, offices, residential units and a parking structure in the area between Sunset Boulevard and the Doolittle on Vine Street, according to the plan approved unanimously by the council.

Regent is expected to contract with the Montalban-Nosostros Foundation to renovate and run the theatre, which may be renamed the Ricardo Montalban Theatre. The foundation is an outgrowth of Nosotros Inc., an organization that Montalban, the Mexican-born movie and TV star, created three decades ago to promote Latinos in show business.

-- By Willard Manus
Southern California Correspondent