Bob Baker's Holiday Show Returns to a York Boulevard Building the Theater Has Agreed to Buy
November 5, 2026
November 5, 2026
"This is monumental for us," Alex Evans, co-executive director of the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, told the Los Angeles Times in April. "It's been decades of us struggling to survive. Now we're at this moment where it's not a struggle."
He was talking about real estate. The theater has agreed to buy its home at 4949 York Blvd., on the corner of North Avenue 50, for $5 million. The seller is the building's current owner, Capstone Equities, LAist reported. When the Holiday Wonderland Special opens on Saturday, November 14, it will be the first holiday season the troupe stages as a buyer of its building. The last stretch of that purchase is small enough that ordinary Highland Park households can help finish it.
The theater has moved once already. It spent more than half a century in Westlake, near downtown. That building was sold in 2018 and the theater had to leave, Spectrum News reported, and in 2019 it moved into the former York Theatre in Highland Park. The old site had been named a Historic-Cultural Monument in 2009. The protection went with the building, so the puppets still had to go.
In Highland Park the troupe signed a 10-year lease in 2019. According to the Times, the rent went up every year. In 2026 the theater expects to pay close to half a million dollars in rent, which Evans said is double its entire budget back in the downtown-area space. With the lease ending in a couple of years, the co-directors had a deadline to put together an offer the owners would accept.
At about half a million a year, ten years of rent comes to roughly the $5 million purchase price. On the campaign page the theater says the money it stops paying in rent will go to education programs instead.
The public numbers have moved steadily through 2026:
| Item | Figure | As of |
|---|---|---|
| Purchase price | $5 million | April 2026 |
| Raised toward purchase | $4.5 million | April 2026 |
| Remaining gap | About $250,000 | August 4, 2026 |
| Backstop loan in place | $500,000 | April 2026 |
| Separate goal for repairs | $2 million, planned through 2028 | Campaign materials |
The large gifts came first. The In LA to Stay campaign page credits a leadership gift from the Perenchio Foundation and a matching gift from the Kohl Family Foundation with covering most of the purchase. Other named donors include the Ahmanson Foundation, Wallis Annenberg, the W.M. Keck Foundation, the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, and Jack Black and Tanya Haden.
Smaller donors are being asked for what's left. In April the theater had a $500,000 loan lined up to make sure the deal closes. Co-executive director Mary Fagot told the Times the theater would rather not start owning the building with debt, and she called the remaining amount "an achievable gap." She pointed out that during the pandemic shutdown the theater raised $365,000 in four weeks. By early August, communications director MJ Thompson told Spectrum News that about a quarter of a million dollars was left to raise.
"We never want to get into the space again where there's a danger of the theater going away. So we want to ensure the future." MJ Thompson, to Spectrum News
Buying the building is only the first goal. The extra $2 million is for repairs the theater calls critical, starting with the roof and the restrooms.
The corner of York and Avenue 50 has been put to many uses. The building opened as the York Theater in 1925 and showed movies and vaudeville. Most recently it was the Pyong Kang First Congregational Church. Over the years it also held a barbershop and an organ sales and repair shop.
It's the same story as the dark marquee a few blocks away, which we covered in our piece on the Highland Theatre. A theater building on a Highland Park commercial strip lasts only as long as whoever runs it can keep paying for the space. The Bob Baker purchase is an attempt to stop paying rent on York Boulevard altogether.
The theater says the building's audience is large enough to justify that effort. On its campaign page it reports more than 145,000 visitors a year and more than 20,000 students a year. For 80% of those students, it says, a Bob Baker show is the first theater they have ever seen.
The purchase agreement came during the troupe's busiest year in a long time. In May it introduced "Choo Choo Revue," which the Times described as its first full new production since "Hooray LA!" in 1981. Evans told Spectrum News that the show needed about 100 new puppets at roughly 300 hours of work apiece. Some of them use 3D-printed parts.
Rain pushed Bob Baker Day from April into the fall, because the old puppets can't get wet. The festival took place at Los Angeles State Historic Park on Sunday, September 20, as NBC Los Angeles reported ahead of time. In late October the L.A. travel brand Calpak put out a holiday ad film that turns the York Boulevard theater into a snowy wonderland, according to Uncover LA.
The fall Hallowe'en Spooktacular sold out its full run, which ends Sunday, November 8.
The Holiday Wonderland Special runs from November 14, 2026, through January 17, 2027. It's set up like an old TV holiday special. The host, Demitrius Nova Twinklestar III ("Demi Star"), brings out Pink Cat, the Rockette Reindeers and others to deck the halls and sing carols.
On its visit page, the theater suggests metered street parking on York Boulevard or the nearby public lots at Avenue 51 and at 5033 Lincoln Avenue. It also lists nearby bus and DASH stops and the Highland Park Metro station. If the show will be part of a longer afternoon on York, our guide to the second locations opening on York and Figueroa covers what's within walking distance.
The campaign takes gifts at every level. Preset donations run from $250 to $10,000, one-time or monthly. Some levels come with limited-edition thank-you gifts: a BBMT Los Angeles tote at $100, a Big Bud x BBMT T-shirt at $200, a Big Bud tote at $350, and naming a bathroom daisy flower at $500.
A separate Puppet Parlor naming program puts a donor's name on one of the theater's historic pink chairs for $1,500 or engraves it on a wooden ice cream spoon for $250. That money goes toward the Puppet Parlor rooms, which the theater uses as workshop space for field trips. The theater calls these gifts tax-deductible. This post is general information, not tax advice, so check with your own tax professional about how a gift applies to you.
The theater has a 2019 lease, a rent bill that keeps climbing, a building near the end of its lease term and an owner willing to sell. Anyone who owns or rents property in Highland Park will recognize that math. If you're working through the same question on a York or Figueroa property of your own, Bigtown Homes can go through the lease terms, purchase price and carrying costs with you directly. Schedule a strategy call.
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