This just in:

Cinema Update
For the week of May 6th

The Cinema's Farewell Address

It's been a long great run but it's over. The cinema is closed. The city killed it.

Last week, while we thought we were still working with the city, city government closed the cinema by order of the mayor, the fire marshall and the building department.

They said we were not making sufficient progress toward installing fire sprinklers. That's hard to understand or even believe, since we had dug ourselves out of the $80,000 hole the city put us in, gotten drawings, obtained permits, asked for bids, awarded the contract, and were a week or two away from beginning. Why is that not sufficient progress?

(Full press release after the jump.)

We asked for a two month extension and were denied. Left with no options, we sent the following email to city officials:

Congratulations,

You have finally forced us out of business, which seems to have been your intent from the beginning. First you declared war on us, then you crippled us, then you killed us. We will not attempt to reopen. The option you give us will not allow us to survive. You say you closed us for lack of substantial progress. But it is hard to understand why getting the plans, getting the permits, calling for bids and awarding the contract with the promise of completion within two months is not substantial progress. You can robotically quote chapter and verse of the building code bible as much as you like, but what the code actually states is that in an historic building the fire protection provisions SHALL NOT BE REQUIRED. That may not exempt the cinema from sprinklers, as the city claims, and we agreed to do the sprinklers, but it is certainly a reasonable basis for giving the cinema two months to comply without closing, especially when we are, according to Diane Sugimura, supposed to be "proactively working together". I've discovered the city doesn't work with anyone. It tells them what to do. There has been very little "how can we help?" and a whole lot of "how difficult can we make this?"

The closure will:

Force the cinema into bankruptcy

Create another vacant building

Put 12 people out of work

Cost the city $90,000 in tax, loan and sprinkler hookup revenue

Devastate the economic life of a business community that depends on the cinema for traffic

Cause the loss of over $200,000 for Columbia City investors and supporters

Anger and disappoint thousands of families, schools, churches, day cares, youth groups and
businesses that depend on the cinema

Whatever you think, the saner part of the city will view this as epic stupidity and unfairness. You should all be ashamed of yourselves for your smallness, lack of vision and the damage you have done. It is city dysfunction at its worst and a major betrayal of the Columbia City community.

The cinema was a beautiful thing. It became the symbol and pride and center of a neighborhood. You should have treasured it, and done everything you could to preserve it. Instead you destroyed it.

I feel terrible about what has happened. For the last few years, I have worked hard, against incredible odds, to keep the cinema alive for the community and pay back the wonderful investors who got us going and kept us afloat. It was a labor of love and obligation. I ran the cinema for the community, taking a salary, when I took it, that the average homeless person would deem inadequate.

But more than that, it is this community that has worked hard and I thank all of you for the generous support you have given in creating something beautiful. I loved working with all of you and will miss you the most. Together we were a vibrant force and a community in action. I wrote an upbeat email last week thinking everything was going to be all right. Then we all got betrayed. Even though the cinema is gone, we can all look proudly on what we created. Thank you again more than I can say for all your support over the years.

Closed, with no income and no cash reserves, we will have to declare bankruptcy. While we can't promise anything, we intend to put together a small internet company whose sole purpose is to pay back lenders and investors. We also hope the cinema will survive in some new incarnation. The website will continue for awhile. Perhaps the building owners, confronted with a vacant building, will see the wisdom of installing sprinklers themselves and renegotiating the rent, but they haven't in the past. Perhaps a new operator can be found. Perhaps a community nonprofit can be formed to take over operation. I will certainly help in any way I can.

The cinema will stay open through Thursday night, if the city doesn't come and forcibly shut us down, which they might. Then the film goes through the gate, the shutter closes and the cinema goes dark.

What to Do

If you have an opinion about this one way or the other, here are some email addresses:

mike.mcginn@seattle.gov
cc dave.cordaro@seattle.gov, diane.sugimura@seattle.gov, john.nelsen@seattle.gov, darryl.smith@seattle.gov, gregory.dean@seattle.gov

Or you can become their Twitter and Facebook friends.

A Brief History of What Went Down

When the city discovered we did not have sprinklers, they summoned me to a meeting and promised a friendly, cooperative, proactive (their word) process to resolve the problem. It was anything but. They promised a second discussion meeting on how we would proceed. But instead, before the promised meeting, they closed the cinema behind my back the next day. The city lied to us.

We had a few meetings trying to get back open. You would not believe the mindless, inflexible, robotic nastiness of the city representatives. I do because I was there. I remember thinking with fear and surprise "My God, these people are vicious." I remember our attorney telling me "You've got to remember you are not dealing with rational people." It seemed like a vendetta against the cinema from the beginning for stepping over the line, not a friendly, proactive discussion of solutions as promised. Our first architect quit because the city was so nasty to him. I had to complain before it stopped.

After much public outcry, we were allowed to reopen two of the cinemas and were given a temporary occupancy permit. The closure ultimately cost us over $80,000 in lost revenue and made it impossible to think about sprinklers during that period. It didn't matter because the city took until December 11 to approve our permit anyway, and by that time it looked like the cinema would have to close. Once again the community came forward and saved it. Then our occupancy permit expired. Citing the progress we had made, we asked for a six month extension to give us time to raise the necessary financing and promised completion by the end of summer. We never dreamed we wouldn't get it. But the city denied the request and gave us 60 days. That was not enough time to raise the approximate $35,000 needed for the first phase.

At this point, we asked the mayor's office for help to get us an extension. We had put together a financing package and the big summer movies were coming. We could get it done if we got the time. The mayor's office promised help and then did nothing, finally betraying the community with a lame, self-serving CYA letter to the Rainier Valley Post suggesting that we work more closely with city departments. The mayor's office simply did not care, and to absolve themselves, put all the blame on the cinema. This was a problem the mayor's office could have solved with a phone call.

By now the 60 day extension had expired but we were that much closer to the summer season and our marketing/financing initiatives which we expected would give us an extra $40,000. So we appealed saying we could have the sprinklers installed in just two months but we had to stay open or there simply would not be enough cash flow. Just two more months. After all, the building had been without sprinklers and without a fire for 90 years. But it was like dealing with the Mafia. They pressed the robot response button and again said no.

So we said "okay, we'll operate with only two screens and try to get it done." They said no again. Because there is no law against a single screen cinema without sprinklers they had to let us operate just one. But there was a catch. They would make us close anyway, probably up to a month, to redraw the plans already drawn and approved, knowing full well that we couldn't do it. Does this seem like working together?

If the city wanted to force us out of business, they would not have done anything any different. I remember an arrogant and powerful city official yelling at me "If I had my way, the cinema would be closed forever." Well, he got his way.

I informed the city we were unable to accept their conditions. It was over. There was no way to save the cinema.

Addressing the Issues

You will probably hear a lot of self-serving, face-saving, truth-altering city spin in the next few weeks. There has to be some fallout over this. And there has been an incredible amount of misinformation going around as fact and opinion in the blogosphere. So here are the facts. If anyone tells you different, they aren't telling you the truth.

· All the remodeling done at the cinema was done under a permit and according to code. There are no construction issues at the cinema as a city-required plan review determined. The cinema, on the advice of seasoned professionals, did a little more work under the permit than was authorized, but it was a question of expediency. We did what we had to do and straightened things out with the city afterward, paying an increased permit fee, a not uncommon strategy in the construction industry. We did not address the sprinkler issue because we honestly thought we were exempt (and still do). So when we applied for final inspection and permanent occupancy under the permit, the sprinkler issue arose. The only issue we currently have are the sprinklers.

· The city is fond of saying to the media "Mr. Doyle brought this on himself." Probably true, but so what? Doesn't matter who's at fault. Move beyond it. Besides, brought what on himself? All the nastiness the city could summon? When he agreed to comply and be good? When we were "proactively working together?" This sounds a lot like punishment rhetoric not problem-solving rhetoric. Besides, it's not about Mr. Doyle anyway. It's about, or should have been about, what was good for the community and what would solve the problem.

· Fire safety issues. Let's be real. There are no safety issues. Despite the misinformation disseminated by the city, the cinema has had from the beginning:

All the required exits

All the required hardware

All the required pathway lighting

All the required exit lighting

All the required emergency backup lighting

Plus nonflammable curtains, smoke alarms and fire extinguishers.

We have always cared about our customers and safety has always been a concern. The fire marshall even conceded in a moment of reasonableness that the problem wasn't fire safety, it was the code. A few lines of text said we had to have fire sprinklers. Even though a few other lines said we didn't. As a sympathetic city official said to me "When the city wants to tar and feather someone, they raise the issue of public safety."

If it were a problem of safety, then the Uptown, the Oak Tree, the Crest and the Admiral would have to have sprinklers and they don't.

So while I'm sad things turned out this wayI'm not angry. I don't even hate the small-minded, soulless bureaucrats specifically responsible. But I do want you to know the truth.

Happier Times: John Keister Arrives May 18

Don't forget John Keister, May 18 at Rainier Valley Cultural Center. Maybe he can find some humor in all this. We'll go out with a bang in our last live performance event ever.

Advance tickets are available at the Cinema box office while we're still open or on-line via:

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/158786.

Important Announcement

By the way I'm out of a job. I'm looking for anything: fundraiser, corporation executive, blog writer, pizza delivery driver, dog walker. Plus I'm looking for a small office/bedroom and a storage area. Let me know if you have any ideas.

And that's it. Thank you for seven wonderful years.

Paul Doyle