PORT ANGELES — The sign in the box office of the shuttered Lincoln Theater says “SOLD.”
“There is an offer on the table,” said Dan Gase, a real estate broker with Coldwell Banker Uptown Realty, which is handling the sale to Scott Nagel, a Port Angeles-based festivals and events producer.
“It is considered a pending sale,” Gase said. “We’ve entered the contingency phase.”
Among the contingencies is fundraising, according to Nagel, who is best known for running the Dungeness Crab & Seafood Festival in Port Angeles every October.
Nagel and his wife, Karen Powell, a management consultant and tour producer, are about to begin a search for a major funder — or several — to remodel and reopen the 98-year-old Lincoln.
“We did this to get the process started,” Nagel said.
“We’re working to raise money to purchase the building, which would then become the property of a nonprofit organization.”
Headlined “Port Angeles Performing Arts Center,” Nagel’s two-page executive summary calls the Lincoln Theater “the key to the economic future of downtown Port Angeles” and a “resource for the entire Olympic Peninsula.”
Nagel doesn’t mince words when describing his plan for downtown’s 1916 movie house.
The three-screen cinema, shuttered since March, can be reborn, Nagel’s summary says, as a 500-seat theater for concerts, stage plays and musicals, lectures, catered corporate events — and movies outside the mainstream.
The building at 132 E. First St. is owned by Sun Basin Theatres of Wenatchee, which closed it last winter after deciding it would be too costly to convert to digital technology.
In May, the Lincoln went on the market with Gase at an asking price of $259,000.
Nagel, a former director of Seattle’s Folklife Festival and an events producer in Port Angeles and Sequim for some 15 years, has been eyeing the theater for months. He has a three-phase plan for it now.
“We are negotiating with the building owners,” Nagel said Friday.
“We have an offer on the building, subject to raising the money” from sponsors, he added.
He needs substantial ones because Nagel, who didn’t give the amount of his offer, has neither the intention nor the money to buy the Lincoln for himself.
Instead, he hopes to secure it through a capital campaign in which corporations, family foundations or some combination would donate the costs of renovation.
Raising that capital is the first phase.
Then comes bringing the theater under the umbrella of a nonprofit organization such as the Juan de Fuca Foundation for the Arts, something both Nagel and foundation Executive Director Dan Maguire speak favorably about.
“We’ll consider it,” Maguire said, adding: “We’re a performing arts organization. It would be crazy for us not to.”
The foundation board of directors would have to approve the move, “and they want more information about capital expenses and operating expenses.”
That information will become available once Nagel and Maguire meet with the city of Port Angeles about building requirements.
Renovation plan
Nagel’s preliminary renovation plan includes removing the theater’s dividing walls, creating one auditorium with a balcony; building a stage with lighting and sound; adding handicapped-accessible restrooms on the main floor; and exploration of a redesigned lobby.
Nagel’s meeting with the city is set for Jan. 8.
After that, he expects building officials will issue a letter outlining structural requirements for a remodeled Lincoln.
Then Nagel will construct his budget. He expects to have a plan with costs and drawings toward the end of January.
The third phase of all this: a community campaign and visioning process for a nonprofit theater.
It might be called the Lincoln, Nagel said, or it might be named for its sponsors, if they want that — or it might have a new name dreamed up by the community.
In any case, this would be a place for “any kind of performing arts,” Nagel said.
Film would be a significant part of the programming, he added, regardless of the fact that Sun Basin Theatres placed a non-compete clause in the sale contract.
No first-run movies may be shown at the Lincoln if and when it opens, as Sun Basin’s Deer Park Cinema features those just a few miles east of Port Angeles.
There’s a world of film out there beyond first-run, mainstream fare, Nagel feels.
“I’m very confident this model will work financially and programmatically,” he said.
At the same time, he added, the entire community needs to buy in — both ways.
Nagel first heard community members’ hopes for the Lincoln during two Port Angeles Arts Council forums last spring.
Dozens of people voiced their ideas for the place. Eventually, the discussion boiled down to the concept of a multiuse arts center.
Maguire was among those with an intense interest in the Lincoln as a Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts venue.
The Memorial Day weekend festival will move out of the Vern Burton Community Center in 2015 to mount the main stage under a tent on Port Angeles’ waterfront.
The Lincoln, perhaps by 2016, could serve as one of the other downtown stages.
And while Maguire has ample experience running nonprofits — he was executive director of the Clallam County YMCA before taking the helm of the Juan de Fuca Foundation — he didn’t want to add the Lincoln Theater to his plate.
He’s stayed in close touch with Nagel, though, and plans to attend the January meeting with city officials.
“The proposal is really exciting,” Nathan West, city economic development director, said of Nagel’s plan to revive downtown’s theater.
He added that the city has a facade improvement grant program that may provide up to $10,000 in matching funds for the Lincoln.
The facade would be only a small piece. Nagel’s preliminary list also has a new roof, a catering kitchen and outdoor seating for a wine garden among its possibilities.
He and wife Powell have engaged Port Angeles architect Michael Gentry to study the Lincoln’s potential.
They’ve also talked with downtown business owners such as Neil Conklin of Bella Italia, the restaurant a couple of doors down.
“We would all love to see the Lincoln come back to life . . . [but] with any project downtown, it’s all about capital investment and getting people to take that risk,” said Conklin, who opened Bella nearly 19 years ago.
He well remembers the days when people came from around the world to the Lincoln, where the “Twilight” movies played.
They could walk down and dine at his place, the mythical site where “Twilight’s” teenage heroine, Bella, had her first date with Edward the vampire.
Now Conklin is networking with his contacts made over two decades of doing business here, developing support for a renewed Lincoln.
Like many around Port Angeles, he knows of other nonprofit theaters, including the Lincoln in Mount Vernon.
It’s run by a few staff people, a lot of volunteers, a board of directors and ample support from community members.
To Maguire’s mind, keeping the theater thriving after the honeymoon phase could be the tough part.
“It’s not the capital that’s so hard; it’s the operating expenses,” he said, yet “I’m pretty optimistic. I think it will be a popular project.
“Anybody who’s invested in this town is going to want to try to do what they can to make it happen.”
________
Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
