Last week, I had a pleasant Zoom conversation with two local business owners and community activists, Sherry Phillips and Evelyn Tennyson, about the historic Liberty Theatre, which has been playing movies to Pagosa Springs audiences since 1919. The two women appear to have a fondness for the old theater. As I have as well.
Back in 1992 — while I was home in Juneau, Alaska, taking care of the kids — my wife Clarissa paid a visit to a small town in southern Colorado. She called me on the phone:
“Pagosa Springs has this cute little movie theater, right downtown. It feels just like the old Capitol Theater in Juneau, before it closed. That was my first job, when I was in high school — running the concessions. In fact, this whole downtown reminds me of Juneau, back in the early 1970s before the tourists took over… People are so friendly. We should think about moving here…”
It’s entirely possible that I wouldn’t be living in Pagosa Springs in 2021, if not for the existence of the Liberty Theatre.
Of course, in 2020, the entire movie industry got hammered by the coronavirus. Public gatherings were prohibited, and as we all know, movies are a classic form of public gathering.
But maybe all is not lost? From a January article on the Good Morning America website:
Patrick Corcoran, vice president and chief communications officer for the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO), told “Good Morning America” about the “huge” thing coming to the rescue of movie theaters as we head into 2021… The ‘Save Our Stages Act’, a bipartisan effort led by John Cornyn, a Republican senator from Texas, and Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic senator from Minnesota, among others, includes $15 billion to assist independent music venues, movie theaters and other cultural institutions.
These businesses, most of which have largely been closed since March 2020, will be able to apply for grants to cover six months of payroll, rent, utilities and personal protective equipment without adding to their debt, as would have been the case with loans.
“What this stimulus program does is, for those who are in small and mid-sized companies that have been most affected, it gives them a bridge until we can reopen normally,” Corcoran said. Without this aid, NATO estimated that 70% of mid-size and smaller movie theaters in the US could have filed for bankruptcy or closed permanently within months, resulting in more than 70,000 jobs potentially being permanently lost…
A few years back — on December 6, 2013, to be more precise — the owners of the LIberty Theatre, Mark and Cindi Monaco, published an open letter to the community explaining that the movie industry would soon cease to release movies on 35mm film. All future movies would be released in a proprietary digital format — and would require completely new projectors and sound systems to be installed.
Their open letter was asking for financial support from the community, through a campaign aimed at generating matching funds for several possible grants:
The estimated cost of the digital conversion is approximately $65,000. This includes all equipment, installation, training, fundraising expenses for Community Funded if we reach our goal.
The entire campaign is an “all or nothing” basis. If we do not raise the necessary funds, we do not qualify for the grant monies and we will simply close the theater.
Here’s a 3-minute promotional video that ran in the Daily Post the following week.
The campaign was successful, and Mark and Cindi announced in March 2014 that they’d met their financial goals and would be able to make the conversion to digital movies. From an article posted in the the Pagosa Springs Journal, written by supporter Carole Howard:
Now theatre owner Mark Monaco has announced that the Liberty Theatre’s fundraising campaign has reached its goal of raising $23,000 in individual donations, thus activating pending matching grants totaling $20,000. These funds, combined with Monaco’s personal savings and help from a private investor from California, have saved our theatre.
“We all know that Pagosa is a very caring community,” Monaco said. “The success of this grassroots fundraising effort is just another example of the generosity of the very special people who live here.”
That was in 2014.
This past August, as the coronavirus made its way through seemingly every corner of the globe, a poster appeared outside the Liberty Theatre. It was not advertising an upcoming movie. The theater had been ‘closed temporarily’ for the past six months, and was now being offered for sale.
The poster suggests that the venue could be converted from a movie theater to some other use, such as a pub, or used for live theater or possibly live music. Some type of business that would help pay a half-million-dollar mortgage, presumably.
From the CREN (Colorado Real Estate Network) real estate listing:
REAL ESTATE IS NOW OFFERED SEPARATELY FROM THE BUSINESS. Liberty Theatre, the 4th oldest theatre in Colorado and the only movie theatre in Pagosa Springs, is available. It is located in the historic district of downtown Pagosa Springs, right across from the Pagosa Hot Springs – Great Exposure! This 150+ seat theatre has operated since 1919, and has recently been updated to digital technology. In front of the movie screen is a stage, perfect for performances/events. This is a prime business opportunity in beautiful downtown Pagosa Springs. Purchase price with real estate and business is negotiable.
The CREN listing offered two dozen photos of the interior and exterior, including the following photo, looking back towards the projection booth:
Presumably, this is how the theater looked in January, when Sherry Phillips and her husband Les briefly considered purchasing the historic performance space.
Sherry Phillips:
“We liked the idea, but then we said, ‘What are we thinking? We’re retired. We don’t want all that work…’ And we walked away from it.
“Then, we were going to dinner with Stanley and Evelyn last fall, before they returned to Florida…”
Evelyn Tennyson chimes in:
“So, I had looked at it, and had put an offer in on it, and I was telling Les and Sherry about it, and they said, ‘Yeah, we looked at it as well…’ So we just left it at that, and some things happened with the offer and the inspection, and we ended up backing out on the deal.
“But it just kind of kept haunting me…”