Landmark's Opera Plaza Cinema, whose future was uncertain to due to the pandemic and which a property owner at one point wanted to convert into office space, is set to reopen Friday, Nov. 19, with a couple of San Francisco classics and some new art house fare on its screens. "We are eager to welcome our audience back to the completely renovated Opera Plaza Cinema," Paul Serwitz, Landmark Theatres president and chief operations officer, said in a statement. "Regulars will enjoy a significantly enhanced movie-going experience." The return of the theater, announced Monday, Nov. 15, comes after a $1.2 million renovation funded by Landmark and the San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation. The San Francisco Giants' longtime executive vice president and chief legal officer, Jack Bair, who co-founded the nonprofit foundation with fellow Giants executive Alfonso Felder in 2002, said the theater not only was worth saving, but it also was a vital cog in the neighborhood. "Landmark has a long reputation of showing art and independent film in San Francisco," Bair told The Chronicle by phone. "The Opera Plaza has long been the home for that. It's an important theater for a lot of people who enjoy that type of film. … There's been a lot of support from neighborhoods and the commercial districts and from the film community." This is good news for Bay Area film fans after Landmark announced the permanent closing of the California Theatre in Berkeley last month and San Francisco's Clay Theatre in the Fillmore District in January 2020. The revamped Opera Plaza at 601 Van Ness Ave. will debut with two San Francisco cop classics — "Bullitt" (1968) and "Dirty Harry" (1971) — as well as new art house films: the Asian American indie feature "I Saw a Simple Man," starring Constance Wu; the documentary "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time," about the author of "Slaughterhouse Five"; and Kosovo's official submission for the Academy Awards, "Hive." Just a few blocks away from the Opera Plaza on Van Ness Avenue, the renovated CGV San Francisco 14, formerly the AMC Van Ness 1000, reopened in September. The return of a combined 18 movie screens on the Van Ness corridor is the latest sign that the thoroughfare is not only coming out of its pandemic slumber, but is also emerging from the nearly completed rebuilding project by the city that has torn up a 2-mile stretch of the street for five years and threatened some businesses that line Van Ness.