The Fortuna Theatre on Main Street. Photo by Andrew Goff.


PREVIOUSLY

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The 6.4 magnitude quake that rattled Humboldt County almost four years ago damaged homes, destroyed infrastructure, and displaced five dozen people in Rio Dell. It also forced the Fortuna Theatre to stop screening films: a broken sprinkler system caused severe structural damage. It’s been shuttered since. 

Its closure may be a minor tragedy compared to the rest of the carnage the earthquake wrought, but a few years of neglect hasn’t been easy on the theater. Its marquee, huge and unlit, is visible from both ends of Main Street. The interior has degraded, and vandals shattered the 90-year-old tempered glass on the ticket booth last week. It’s becoming an “attractive nuisance,” as theater advocate Linda Rasmussen put it, but there may be a renaissance in its future. The city of Fortuna and the group that wants to save it have a shot at purchasing it.

California’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program funds local projects in rural areas that benefit the impoverished. Fortuna’s city council decided at a meeting last week that they’d apply for up to $1 million from the program; if the application is successful, the city will lend the money to the Fortuna Theatre Foundation, a group dedicated to the theater’s repair and re-opening. The foundation would use the cash to buy the theater; the loan will be paid back over the next 30 years at an interest rate of 3%. Fortuna wouldhold a lien on the theater. California will reveal the grant’s recipients in September.

Linda Rasmussen, a founder and advocate for the foundation, told the Outpost that the city had been keeping them updated on funding opportunities, and let them know about the CDBG program. She was astounded when Fortuna approved their application.

“I was stunned,” Rasmussen said. “I’m like, ‘Whoa, they voted that through.’ Then I was excited. Then I’m scared too, because there’s a lot of work. I’m scared about the volume of work that’s going to have to be done.”

The Fortuna Theatre Foundation aims to purchase and refurbish the theater, restoring it to its pre-earthquake condition and resuming film screenings. (The foundation has yet to work out what kinds of films they’ll screen; they’re also considering building out a stage for live shows and looking into opening a small arcade in the building as well.) If the application is successful and the foundation manages to buy it, they’ll fulfill the requirement to benefit low-income people by giving them jobs at the theater. 

It’s an important project, Rasmussen said. Like many small towns, Fortuna has increasingly fewer and fewer places to hang out and gather outside the home and workplace. She said she talked to one recent high school graduate who started high school right around the time the theater shut down. She was disappointed they never got a chance to do the “whole high school thing” and go to the movies without their parents tagging along, Rasmussen said. Its appearance is also a problem. 

“It’s just a drag on the whole main street to see that marquee dead,” Rasmussen said. “To me, that’s the primary visual. It’s the character of a town, especially one small as ours.”

The foundation needs about $1.1 million to buy the theater, according to their website. The current theater owner David Corkill is willing to sell, according to Rasmussen and Fortuna’s senior planner Katey Schmidt. He and the foundation are working on setting up a property appraisal. Rasmussen said there’s already been some work done on the theater: the sprinklers have been fixed, and a crew will tear out the destroyed seats and walls later this month. 

The city already has much of the money they’d use to fund the theater’s purchase. Fortuna’s earned about $910,000 in ongoing revenue from past programs CDBG money funded, much of it debt repayment from ‘90s-era housing rehabilitation loans. Under federal law, money made from previous CDBG programs has to be re-invested in other low-income focused programs, though it can only be used on state-approved programs. If the money isn’t used, it has to go back to the state.

Fortuna did entertain another potential CDBG application from the Blue Timber Real Estate Company, but decided their proposal wasn’t “application ready.”

“The Fortuna community cares about this theater, and it’s not okay to have it become an attractive nuisance,” Rasmussen said. “Someday it’ll be worse. Everyone gets annoyed when I say the word ‘blight,’ by the way, but it’s going to get there. I know Fortuna is really interested in revitalizing the town. And really — you can’t do that without our theater.”