The Vogue Theater is a former single-screen movie house on Third Avenue in downtown Chula Vista, California. It opened in 1945 with 825 seats, and for 20 years now it has been closed.
The city spent $260,000 on the vacant lot next door so a developer would take on the theater. The lot is still city property. The theater never reopened.
One team after another drew plans for the property: concerts, food, mezzanine seating, outdoor screens. The last plan missed its deadlines and was never completed.
In May 2026 Chula Vista acquired the Vogue itself and now owns both the theater and the parking beside it. The city says the building still needs a full assessment. No reopening date has been set.
The second theater on Third Avenue
By May 1944 a builder had a new movie house planned for Third Avenue in Chula Vista, on the block between Davidson and E streets, and the man who ran the Seville up the street was set to operate it.
Defense jobs had brought new residents, and by June 1944 Chula Vista had more than twice its 1940 population.
By 1946 the downtown business district ran about five blocks along Third Avenue.
Construction was underway by late 1944. Frank Hope Jr. designed the theater in poured-in-place concrete.
The front came out Art Deco Moderne, with a marquee over the sidewalk.
The Vogue opened on January 19, 1945 with "Happy Land" and "Swing Out the Blues."
One screen, 825 seats, in a downtown that already had a theater. Tom Huntington was now running both of them.
Polio rules, then a parade
Three years later polio restrictions reached the Vogue.
On July 30, 1948, children under 12 could enter only with an adult, and the Vogue and the Seville canceled their children's matinees.
Both theaters brightened their auditoriums and ran their ventilation systems at full capacity; the extra light was meant to help patrons find seats without touching other people.
That cut out the audience a neighborhood house counted on for its afternoons.
It's a documented change to how the Vogue was run, and a public health emergency wrote it.
The auditorium took on other work. It held official mayoral debates in some of its operating years.
On March 14, 1961 the Chula Vista unit of the Children's Hospital Auxiliary built a theater party around a showing of "Home from the Hill," with a reception beforehand at Leader Department Store and George Peppard there in person.
The money went to the Easter Seal drive run by the San Diego Society for Crippled Children.
By 1964 Huntington owned the Vogue, and that year he organized the first Starlight Yule Parade.
The route ran north on Third Avenue from H Street to E Street, and about 10,000 people turned out. He was one of the first grand marshals.
By 1971 the parade was pulling about 50,000, five times the first crowd, and none of it happened inside his theater.
Six screens opened. The Vogue kept one.
The Seville closed in 1955 and came down in the early 1960s, which left the Vogue as the last of Chula Vista's early downtown movie theaters.
The competition that showed up next was bigger. A two-screen house opened on Fifth Avenue in January 1972.
In October 1983 the UA 6 opened on Third Avenue with six screens and 1,914 seats, more than twice what the Vogue could hold in one room, and multiplexes in National City added more screens around the same time.
The Vogue stayed single-screen and moved downstream. In its final years the Vogue was a sub-run house.
New releases could reach Third Avenue a month or two after their first-run dates, while cheap multi-film programs filled the schedule.
The last of those ran on July 20, 2006: three features for $3.50, with fewer than 50 people in the room.
The theater closed that month, after more than 60 years. The marquee read "Opened 1945, Closed 2006. That's all, folks."
A shell protected from demolition
The inside had already been stripped by the time the next owners arrived.
The seating was gone, and a later sales flier described what remained as a shell. The façade was the part the owners hoped to preserve as historic.
The 2014 plan kept movies in the mix, but the room was supposed to do much more.
Movable seating would let close to 1,000 people use it for concerts, stage shows, classes, exhibitions, lectures, meetings and workshops.
The city paid $260,000 for 224 Third Avenue in February 2015.
The 0.14-acre parcel just north of the Vogue could add downtown parking while the city held it for a future redevelopment deal.
By December 2015 the city was treating the Vogue as a candidate historic resource, putting demolition through the preservation process.
Formal designation had not been completed, and city staff said that left its financial incentives limited.
A 2017 proposal for a restaurant, a bar, and a 1,200-capacity concert theater went nowhere.
Four years of extensions
In April 2019 Chula Vista agreed to let Tecture Red LLC buy the lot for $210,000, $50,000 below what the city had paid in 2015.
The deal came with conditions: permits and other project requirements had to be finished before escrow closed.
The original closing date was November 29, 2020. By spring, city staff was already pressing Tecture for complete construction drawings.
COVID reached San Diego County in March, and the council pushed the deadlines out two years that December.
Tecture was still behind a year later. The city called it in default, then gave the project another extension that carried escrow to June 2023.
The Vogue stayed closed, but Tecture did some work where people could see it.
The agreement required upkeep outside, and the company added lighting and kept the facade painted.
Its 2021 design put 500 to 1,000 seats inside, a bar on each level, a mezzanine, and an outdoor screen throwing films onto the side of the theater from the lot next door.
Tecture pulled out by January 2024.
Chula Vista owns the Vogue now
In May 2026 the city announced it had bought the theater itself.
The Vogue Theater is a single-screen movie house at 226 Third Avenue in downtown Chula Vista, California, opened in January 1945 and closed in July 2006, and Chula Vista now owns it along with the parking area beside it.
The city initially withheld the price because of a settlement agreement with the previous owners.
By June 2026 it was public: $2.5 million, against the $1.45 million the building had sold for in 2007.
Chula Vista intends to remain the owner. Officials say the building still needs a full evaluation, and they want someone else to run the venue.
At the May announcement they talked about stage performances, live music, movies, and community events, territory earlier plans had already covered in 2014, 2017, and 2021.
At the end of August 2026, the Vogue was still closed.
Chula Vista had owned it for more than three months, with no operator or reopening date announced.
Independent Publisher Notice
BestAttractions is an independent editorial publisher. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of any location, business, property owner, manager, government agency, or organization described in this article.
Comments posted on this page are not forwarded to, reviewed by, or acted upon by any entity mentioned in the article.
For official inquiries, complaints, applications, bookings, or other requests, please contact the relevant entity directly through its official website or other verified channels.