By Los Altos

Town Crier Staff Report

A movie theater in downtown Los Altos isn’t completely out of the picture despite it losing out to a hotel on the city-owned lot on First and Main streets last spring.

The Los Altos City Council last week began searching for a consultant to develop a land-use policy for downtown’s parking plazas that would improve parking and analyze the feasibility of placing a movie theater and housing on those sites.

The $35,000 study would call for community groups, engineers and construction management professionals to conduct a brief, but intensive, evaluation of downtown uses, a process called a charette.

The possibility of building parking structures will be included in the study, though the council agreed it would not use city money to add more parking downtown.

Merchants would probably have to bear the cost of any parking structures, council said.

The city would develop the land-use document as an addendum to the Downtown Urban Design Plan, which outlines downtown’s design guidelines.

The council voted last June to develop a land-use plan for downtown in conjunction with its decision to place a hotel, rather than housing or a movie theater, at the city-owned property at the corner of First and Main streets.

During the months leading up to the council’s decision, a large number of residents stepped forward to support a theater at that site.

They criticized the council for ignoring a public opinion, particularly a survey that indicated that a majority of the community wanted a theater.

Mayor King Lear said the land-use study would include a consensus among the community that residents complained wasn’t there during the council’s decision on the development of First and Main streets.