Showman keeps showing he puts his money where his mouth is

It surprised no one when the recent grand opening of Ballard's Majestic Bay Theatres turned out to be just that: grand.

The $5 million, 16-month makeover of the historic cinema was a pet project of Ken Alhadeff, 52, a Seattle businessman and philanthropist. The scion of a prominent old Seattle family, Alhadeff is as well known for his dramatic personality and outsized emotions as for his political and civic contributions.

Outside the theater Oct. 11, floodlights filled the sky. Inside, Kenny - as he is known to his friends - wrapped King County Executive Ron Sims in a bear hug. Sims, in turn, praised Alhadeff and his wife, Marleen, as "people who just give and give and give."

With family wealth, real-estate ownership and personal investments to tap, Alhadeff has pledged some $10 million over the years to house the homeless, counsel runaway kids, teach hearing-impaired children and recruit future teachers of color.

He pulled together the deal that preserved the exterior of Seattle's historic Coliseum Theatre (owned by his family) and renovated it into a store for Banana Republic.

Consistently among the state's top five contributors to the Democratic Party, political insiders consider him a future contender for public office.

His past is checkered with drug and alcohol addiction, jail time and public contempt for the sale of the beloved Longacres Park racetrack. But now Alhadeff is recognized for his passion, generosity and flamboyant showmanship.

His latest grand gesture - the Majestic Bay - is a melding of his business and philanthropic interests, and of his love for Seattle.

He spent millions buying the old theater, tearing it down and putting up a spiffy new one, and promising three movies each week even though it probably will lose money.

At the theater opening, he concluded with vintage Alhadeff panache by reading a letter. It was from Gayla White, 60, a Seattle woman who used to watch double features with her grandmother at the old Bay. She had lost a beloved Cracker Jack jade-colored toy elephant at the theater decades ago, White wrote to Alhadeff. Out of superstitious habit, she has continued to check for the lost elephant at every theater she goes to.

And there, sitting in the back of the theater that very night, was White. Alhadeff introduced her, bounding up the stairs to her seat. It's amazing what people collect and sell over the Internet these days, he told the audience. Then he held out his hand to White with a flourish. "Is this," he asked, "your jade elephant?"

Passion embodied

To spend time with Kenny Alhadeff is to hear him recite from memory a poem he wrote after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. ("He marched to SELMA - he walked to D.C. / He did it ALL for YOU and ME!!")

It is to have him recount tales of people in need with the zeal of a Tony Robbins infomercial.

It is to hear sentiments such as "I like to be a cheerleader for righteousness."

It is to have a friend.

"Kenny was the person who helped me work through my father's death," says Sims, whose father died in 1995. Alhadeff saw through Sims' stoic facade and shared the story of his own father's death.

"You don't forget the people who have the ability to look at you and see not the surface side, but to actually see the human being," Sims says.

During construction of the Majestic Bay, Alhadeff got to know each of the 200 crew members, and bought them all lunch on Thursdays.

"I get so excited and exhilarated when I'm standing before or with a group of people and recognize the incredible opportunity (to convey) that every one of them is valuable," Alhadeff says. "They're all the building blocks of the righteousness of humanity."

He knows such statements sound corny. But he matches his passion with money. Among the contributions he and his wife have made:

Several $6,000 scholarships to the Future Teachers of Color program at Washington State University. At least $1 million over five years to United Way of King County. More than $100,000 to the Democratic Party and local/national campaigns during the 1995-96 congressional election cycle.

He sits on about 20 boards of directors, and has been on 40 others in the past.

His love for performing, as well as having arts-patron parents, resulted in donations to the Seattle Repertory Theatre, 5th Avenue Theatre Association and Foolproof, all places whose boards he sits on.

He believes lack of money should never be a barrier to education. Thus his board membership at WSU (his alma mater) and Cornish College of the Arts, and the establishment of a teacher's recruitment fund at WSU.

He established a scholarship fund for the Future Teachers of Color program at WSU. He was rejected by a WSU fraternity because he is Jewish, and later contributed to the campaign against Initiative 200, the anti-affirmative-action measure passed by state voters in 1998.

A painful past

Alhadeff's philanthropy is rooted in family legacy. But his passion for it was intensified by painful personal experience.

His great-uncle Nessim Alhadeff came from the island of Rhodes in Greece and helped build the fishing industry here. His grandfather Joseph Gottstein founded Longacres and brokered some of the biggest commercial real-estate deals in Seattle.

But some remember Alhadeff best for what seemed a betrayal of that family legacy. In 1990, Ken and his brother, Michael, sold Longacres to Boeing, which used the land for commercial development. Neither Boeing nor the Alhadeffs disclosed the purchase price; estimates have ranged from $23.5 million to $94 million.

The sale angered many who worked, raced and visited the horse track, and who predicted the end of the $400 million horse-racing industry in Western Washington.

And it seemed counter to everything Alhadeff professes to stand for: history, community, family legacy, and concern for employees' welfare.

Sitting in his office, surrounded by memorabilia both historic (Thomas Jefferson's signature) and goofy (a Howdy Doody puppet), Alhadeff defended the sale:

"It was the right thing to do for us as a family and it was a good business decision."

The local horse-racing industry has rebounded with the 1996 opening of Emerald Downs in Auburn.

But Alhadeff says the public pummeling over Longacres taught him a lesson in civics, and boosted his philanthropic endeavors. "If we are going to do something like this, I want to make sure that the results of it would not only positively impact my (family), but my community," he says.

He learned a more personal lesson from his battle with drugs and alcohol. Years of numbing himself culminated one day in 1982 when he hit another car and fled. (The other driver suffered a broken foot and Alhadeff served 60 days in jail.)

The addictions caused "great pain" to those around him. A desire to amend that pain has translated into service on the boards of the Central Area Community Alcohol and Substance Abuse Services and The Recovery Alliance.

Alhadeff has been sober for 16 years. His life revolves around his marriage, his children (Aaron, 25; Alison, 13; and Andrea, 12), and his causes.

"I was standing on top of the American mountain of success and fell into the deepest, darkest canyon," he says. "And because I was able, by the grace of God and people who loved me, to come back out of that, every day is a very vibrant day."

Janet Tu's phone: 206-464-2272. Her e-mail: jtu@seattletimes.com.