Support City College: Save the Cinema/TV Building!

Board of Trustees, Los Angeles Community College District

The Los Angeles Community College District plans to demolish the Cinema/TV Building—the historic home of Los Angeles City College’s Cinema and Television program, designed by world-renowned architect William Pereira—and replace it with an inadequate facility based on flawed documentation, insufficient funding, and a lack of meaningful consultation with faculty, staff, or students.

We’re asking LACC and the District to pause demolition, correct the record, and fully evaluate modernization alternatives before an irreversible decision is made.

Hundreds of thousands of people start careers, find callings, and pursue lifelong vocations at our colleges, and we have to build smart enough to hold their needs.

If you believe faculty expertise matters, student learning spaces deserve protection, and historic, purpose-built facilities should not be lost through administrative shortcuts, please sign and share.


To: Board of Trustees, Los Angeles Community College District
From: [Your Name]

We, the undersigned faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community partners of Los Angeles City College and the Los Angeles Community College District, formally oppose the planned demolition of the Cinema/TV (Communications) Building and the construction of a replacement facility.

The Cinema/TV Building is the instructional backbone of LACC’s Cinema and Television program. It houses highly specialized production spaces—including professional sound stages, edit labs, screening rooms, and technical infrastructure—that were purpose-built for industry training and cannot be easily replicated, particularly under the proposed budget. For decades, this facility has prepared students for careers in Los Angeles’s entertainment industry.

The demolition and new-build proposal was advanced without meaningful consultation with the faculty, staff, and students who rely on this building daily. It is based on project documentation that misrepresents the building’s condition, current use, and programmatic value. The proposed replacement reduces square footage and, according to independent research, relies on an unrealistic budget that would significantly diminish the program’s instructional capacity and quality.

We fully support safety upgrades, accessibility improvements, and long-term investment in campus facilities. However, demolition is irreversible. Once this building is gone, so too is the opportunity to preserve a functioning, industry-aligned educational environment. A modernization or targeted upgrade must be transparently and independently evaluated before any irreversible action is taken.
Once demolished, this building—and the opportunity to get this decision right—is gone forever.

By signing below, we call on Los Angeles City College and the Los Angeles Community College District to:

1. Engage in Immediate Action: Decline the $28 million bond and instead use the District’s $28 million in matching funds to modernize and/or upgrade the existing Cinema/TV Building.

2. Establish New Planning Process and Principles
Ensure full participation in all future planning decisions through a faculty- and staff-inclusive Building User Group (BUG), campus-wide discussion in the Facilities Planning Committee, and final approval by the College Council.

3. Preserve the instructional capacity, industry standards, square footage, and historical legacy of the Cinema/TV program.