Rerun: Everett Theatre Building For Sale Again -- Old Movie House Priced At $450,000

EVERETT - The newest owners of the city's last surviving downtown theater are pessimistic that the historic building can be renovated as a movie theater.

"I'm sorry to disappoint everybody," said Jack Clark, whose partnership, A Theater Near You, bought the Everett Theatre in November. "It was kind of a disappointment for me as well."

Clark of Federal Way and his partner, Marysville resident Al Dabestani, purchased the 91-year-old theater from Act III of Portland as part of a package deal involving several other theaters in the region. The purchase price of the Everett Theatre has not been disclosed because the remainder of the deal has not closed, Clark said.

The theater now is listed for re-sale for $450,000 through Coast Commercial Properties Inc. of Marysville. The partners also will consider leasing the building to anyone interested in renovating it for uses such as office space or a museum. Clark said the building could be leased and restored as a theater.

Clark and Dabestani operate five theater complexes in Washington and the Vancouver, B.C., area, including the restored Admiral Twin Theatres in West Seattle. Dabestani independently owns three other theaters, including the Marysville Twin Cinema and the Bay Theatre in Ballard.

Dabestani said he also is negotiating with the Tulalip Tribes to open a new 10-screen theater near the Tulalip Casino, west of Marysville, on the former Thunderbird Drive-In property.

Although the men spent a year negotiating for the Everett theater, Clark didn't get a chance to view the theater's interior until October. He was discouraged by what he saw, he said. Renovation costs had been estimated in the past at $2 million to $3 million.

"If it would work as a theater," Clark said, "we would certainly do it. We'd be happy to do it because that's the kind of business we're in. But we would lose our shirts, I'm afraid."

But city historian David Dilgard says one has to know where to look to appreciate the theater's potential. It's been closed and dark since 1989, and visiting it with flashlights is an eerie experience.

"It's a little like the National Geographic specials on the Titanic," said Dilgard, who wrote a history of the theater for the Everett Historical Commission. "There's fungus growing on the seats; it's damp, it's strange, it's beyond stale. There's nothing about it that's encouraging."

But beneath that first impression lies a community treasure, Dilgard said. The building represents classic second Renaissance revival architecture that is characteristic of other important buildings in Everett's downtown district.

"You're talking about two buildings," he said. "One of them is a parcel of real estate, the other is a cultural element of a community. What I'm talking about is a unique element of the central business district of a city."

The new owners hope to save the building, which is listed on the state Register of Historic Places. The theater originally opened as a majestic performance theater, featuring stars such as Lillian Russell, Al Jolson, Fatty Arbuckle and George M. Cohan.

By the time it closed, it had been split into a low-budget tri-plex, with two screens in the balcony.

"It's not that great a job," Clark said of the 1979 remodeling effort.

It's no longer profitable to operate a single-screen theater, so the Everett Theatre would have to be stripped to its four walls and sloping floors and rebuilt into a multi-screen facility.

It would be less expensive to restore it to its original use as a performing-arts theater, he says.

"It would be a great live theater," Clark said.

Members of the Everett Theatre Society remain disappointed that the city chose to invest in the new $10.5 million Everett Community Theater under construction at the corner of Everett and Wetmore avenues instead of renovating the old theater.

But at least one society member, Tom Hoban Sr., is optimistic that the building's historic facade can be saved. Hoban is the Coast Commercial broker handling the theater account.

"This is a very positive thing; we want to be very creative to sustain what's there," he said. "The only reason downtown Everett hasn't done what it can do is because the business owners haven't done what they can do (to renovate and restore) their buildings."