Despite AT&T’s last-ditch attempt to get a major project approved, the Hermosa Beach Planning Commission Tuesday night held strong to its Oct. 15 vote and unanimously denied a conditional use permit to allow the telecommunications firm to install cellular site antennas on the Hermosa Beach Community Center. The matter could now go before the City Council members who reserve final judgment on the issue.

At its July 23 meeting, the council recognized the Community Center as a locally significant landmark. Several months later, it authorized AT&T to proceed with obtaining permits to install the antenna on the parapet of the community theater and advised City Manager Steve Burrell to go ahead with negotiations for a lease agreement.

The commission denied the request in a 4-1 vote in October and AT&T subsequently urged the city to review the project again after it had generated alternative designs to make the antennas look more aesthetically pleasing to make it consistent with the center’s newly restored face lift.

The Hermosa Arts Foundation, a nonprofit group that has helped to restore the center’s architecture along with asking the city to give it local historic significance, reviewed the proposal and disliked the recommendations.

“We are adamantly against this updated proposal that defaces a very historical building,” said Rick Koenig, the foundation’s vice president. “Quite frankly, we were shocked with their ideas. AT&T’s design team needs to put the cap back on the glue bottle and we are asking you, please don’t put an antenna on this building.”

The Community Center has a different historic designation than that of the Bijou Theater in downtown Hermosa Beach. However, the appointment allowed for the Hermosa Arts Foundation to apply for a grant with the Preserve Los Angeles Planning Grants Program at the Getty Foundation.

If approved, the Getty grant would assist the Arts Foundation in maintaining the art deco architecture of the building built in 1935 as the Pier Avenue School. The Arts Foundation recently restored the exterior of the Community Center with new maroon and gray paint with the consultation of the Los Angeles Art Deco Society.

AT&T’s new proposal suggested painting a horizontal band along the building’s parapet in the same burgundy color now the color of the 3-D pillars that rise up from the building’s exterior.

“The Arts Foundation didn’t feel these new ideas were acceptable for them,” said Community Development Director Sol Blumenfeld. “It did not feel it was the appropriate treatment for the building.”

The city would receive $2,500 or more each month for permitting AT&T to install six 2-foot-by-6-foot cellular phone antennas on the building’s north, south and west facades.

If ever approved by the City Council, AT&T may install two antennas at the west portion of the building facing the center’s parking lot, at the southern end near 11th Place and along the north side facing Pier Avenue.

Aside from the city’s Community Resources Department offices, the building also houses the Hermosa Playhouse and the 2nd Story Pier Avenue Theater.

Commissioner Pete Tucker thought AT&T could have spent more time in its redesign and felt the company didn’t understand the center’s architectural elements.

“I don’t think they get it,” he said. “There are ways to do this but I think they wanted the easy way out. I give it a zero for originality and they should have really reviewed this project the first time around. There are ways to design these installations where you don’t even know an antenna is there.”

Representatives from AT&T did not attend Tuesday’s meeting.