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Landmark Bob Baker Marionette Theater will get new home in mixed-use development

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First, it’ll shutter for two years

The beloved Bob Baker Marionette Theater will temporarily shutter next year and return in 2020 in a new home, the Downtown News reports.

The theater will close to allow for construction of a mixed-user with about 100 apartments above ground-floor commercial space. Once that project’s completed in 2020, the theater will reopen with a space in the new building, the marionette theater’s office manager tells the News.

According to the theater’s website, its future home in the new development “will be designed based on Bob’s original vision for the Theater, offering us a chance to finally realize some of Bob’s most wondrously whimsical dreams.”

The theater, in operation since 1961, was named a city historic-cultural monument in 2009.

The fate of the theater has been up in the air since the 2014 announcement of a development planned on its site at Beverly and Glendale boulevards, on the southern edge of Echo Park.

The theater is still holding shows and is planning fundraisers to build up some financial reserves for the two years of construction. During that time, it also plans to do traveling puppet shows.