Community owned cinemas
- palermonoel
- Sep 23, 2024
- 20 min read
Updated: Oct 1, 2024
As Council prepares for their strategic planning sessions (the season of giving ) it seems likely the town will again be approached by the Qualicum Beach Multi-Use Cinema Society ("Cinema Society") to commit a specific parcel of land for their project.
The project is currently in the town's strategic plan with an estimated cost of $30,000 to cover the cost of a consultant for yet more feasibility work and public consultation. The work is scheduled to begin in 2028. You may recall that the town gave $7,500 back in October 2019 to the Cinema Society to be combined with other grants to cover the $30,000 Cinema Society commissioned feasibility study.
The Cinema Society's website paints clearly their vision for this project.
I love a good film and would happily go to the place they envision to watch movies, hear speakers and listen to live music. However I do not consider myself as the average QB resident. Ask yourself "When was the last time you walked into town to have dinner at one of our few remaining restaurants? Once a year ?Twice a Year? (Take out doesn't count.) How many times did you attend a musical event at TOSH? How many times did you attend a performance at Echo Players/ Village theatre? How many times did you drive to Nanaimo to see a movie?"
After 5PM our village core is deserted. Parking is abundant. We are a community of about 9300 people, 4500 households and more than half are seniors. The Cinema Society is banking that these people along with all of Oceanside will change their lifestyle habits and rush to the cinema on a regular basis.
The proponents of this initiative are persistent in their efforts to engage town council in both the need and benefits of this project. They firmly believe they have the ability to raise not only the building cost but also grant money for anticipated annual operating deficits that, from the feasibility study, range from $215,780 pessimistic to $83,158 optimistic. These are the Cinema Society's numbers not mine as I am not nearly as optimistic.
The feasibility study assumes operating 3 screens with 100 seats each and 6 movies showing per day, 365 days a year. It envisions a volunteer model where only one employee, the Executive director, will actually be paid.
I hope the Cinema Society has a lot of volunteers since not everyone will want to clean the theatre after each show nor clean the toilets at the end of the night. Further the feasibility study is missing any reference to the expertise of the proponents to actually manage this initiative including raising the construction money, managing the construction process, obtaining the grants, and assuming all goes well, actually running the business side of the proposal.
How are other community theatres fairing?
A little research shows that the world of community theatres is a bumpy road heavily dependent upon government handouts and full of contractual obstacles to gain access to first run movies.
As previously reported by CTV news channel on March 12 2024, a new study from Canada's independent cinema owners says their industry is "in crisis" and many theatres will need increased public funding to stay afloat. The research released from the Network of Independent Canadian Exhibitors said 60% of independent cinema operators surveyed between December and February operated at a loss at the end of their most recent fiscal year, and about two thirds of the 67 respondents reported they needed increased public funding {grants} in order to remain operational. The majority estimated they would need about $50,000 in extra funding annually for the next three years to close the immediate {revenue} gaps they face.
A review of the 2023 data (rounded numbers) taken from Charitydata.ca reveals that the following community theatres are often funded from many levels of government and private donations. Revenues from inhouse operations (movie tickets, concession sales, rental revenue and membership fees) cover only a small portion of overall expenses.
Nelson Civic Theatre has $505,000 from in house operations versus total expenses of approximately $981,000. The deficit is partially covered by $121,000 municipal grants and $233,000 from other levels of government and private donations.
Sid Williams Theatre in Courtney has $ 716,000 from in house operations versus total expenses of $1,222,000. The deficit is partially covered by $371,000 municipal grants and $179,000 from other levels of government and private donations.
The Tidemark Theatre in Campbell River has $1,060,000 from in house operations versus
total expenses of $1,407,000. The deficit is partially covered by $352,000 municipal and regional grants. The building is owned by the town. The theatre operates with 24 employees.
Can we (QB tax payers ) afford another under utilized money guzzling asset meant to benefit all of Oceanside ?
As a society, I think we have become addicted to grants. There is a component of every community that thinks we really would like to have (insert any public amenity facility, pool, sport etc.) and it is okay to spend because it will be covered by grants and our local portion will be minimal. We all need to consider that grant money is still tax payer money. Common sense with respect to priorities should still prevail. Surely access to food, a roof over one's head, access to healthcare and modern infrastructure for sewage and water should take higher priority. Changes in federal and provincial government can significantly impact grant revenue streams for both essential and non essential projects.
At a municipal level, the priority should be core services that benefit most if not all QB residents. Town owned land is a precious commodity that we should not hand over lightly.
And when we do hand over land, we need to be fully satisfied that gifting the land doesn't come with on going costs to keep the project afloat. We have a history of funding services that start out small and grow to be bigger or where we put ourselves in position that we feel morally obligated to keep funding with local QB tax payer monies. Examples include our airport, tourism, daycare and healthcare initiatives.
What happens when it all goes wrong ?
I can see it now. Council gives the land, the Cinema Society ends up borrowing against the land, or comes back to town asking for more money to finish the construction as cost overages occur. They finally get the theatre open and it loses money because it is dark after 5PM and no one wants to get in their car when they can watch Netflix in the comfort of their home. The Cinema Society, like many other non profits in town, find it difficult to get the number of volunteers necessary to run an operation of this magnitude and, thus, try to find staff to fill the void, causing even greater expenses and deeper losses. If they cut back on the showings they incur even more losses as revenues decline. The building is a special purpose building with sloped floors so it cannot be easily converted to other uses.
Some things should be left to entrepreneurs with deep pockets and an appetite for risk.
I don't wish to rain on anyone's parade, but there is a reason that no entrepreneur has decided that Oceanside (never mind QB) is the perfect place for this ambitious 8550 square foot theatre and cafe wine bar complex, with 3 screens showing 6 movies every day of the year, with a capital cost (excluding the cost of land) of somewhere between 7 and 10 million based on 2022 construction pricing.
Suggested next step for council
There is no need to continue with this project at this time and it is wasteful of staff resources. Just say No, or if you need QB taxpayers to help you say NO, put the issue on a referendum at the next election and let QB voters decide.
Perhaps at some future time, well down the road, when we actually have a plan for funding the replacement of our existing buildings we can look at combining a smaller version of a screening room within an upgraded curling club/indoor sports building or much needed improved seniors center.
In the interim the town can continue to support the film buffs by renting them space in the under utilized civic center at a price the covers the town's costs. Further, the town could permit special events like movies under the stars in the summer at a local park where costs would be limited to unlocking the public washrooms, perhaps a cleanup crew in the morning to clear away the popcorn bins.
We can have movies and concerts without significant ongoing operating deficits funded by tax payers. Let's leave entrepreneurial risk in the hands of entrepreneurs.
Marie Noel
September 28 2024
We welcome your comment and feedback.
Email us at QualicumBeachInsights@gmail.com
More information about QB Multi Use Cinema Society and how we got here.
The Time Line
May 16 2018 TQB Committee of the whole meeting (COTW) , motion made to have staff work with the proponent and look at the feasibility and viability for the cinema and brew pub along with TOSH at the former bus garage site.
Jan10 2019 TQB COTW presentation made by the Cinema Society.
Motion by council made and approved that staff be instructed to include the cinema proposal when draft strategic plan is reviewed at a later Committee of the whole meeting.
Jan 2019 QBMCS opened an account at Coastal Credit Community Union
May 2019 RDN Northern Communities Economic Development Fund approved $7500 grant toward feasibility study
October 22 2019 the Cinema society wrote to TQB council that they had been working hard to advance the project. Achievements included:
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Their letter was a request for the Town of Qualicum Beach (TQB) to provide a further $7,500 to give them sufficient funding to complete a $30,000 feasibility study.
Oct. 28 2019 council approves $7,500 grant to the Cinema Society for feasibility study
Jan 20 2020 Cinema Society sends letter to town seeking clarifications of the ramifications of the sale of town property old bus garage to Naked Naturals.
Feb 5 2020 TQB regular council meeting. Correspondence from the town to the cinema society now that the bus garage site has been sold to Naked Naturals.
May 29 2020 VIU students present final proposal report for bus garage site
In November 2022 The Cinema Society engaged MNP to complete a potential viability study.
March 2023 in a Committee of the Whole meeting, Ms. Taggart of the Cinema Society requested the town allocate a portion of the towns Growing Communities grant to to the project for community consultation and that a working group be struck to advance the project .
TQB COTW Strategic plan 2024 to 2028 includes scoping sheet # sl-10-24 under community health & wellbeing marked Final
Initiative: Identify land for Multi Purpose Performing arts / cinema.
Estimated cost to the town $30,000 and 150 hours of staff time.
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Comparative community theatre stats 2023 year ends
These financial stats are taken from charitydata.ca
Number of pd staff | Revenue from Goods & Services | Revenue from Fed & Prov, other Charities | Municipal grants | Total Revenues | |||
Sid Williams Courtney | 16 | 716k | 179k | 371k | 1266k | ||
Nelson Civic Theatre Society | 28 | 505k | 233k | 121k | 921k | ||
Qathet film S. Powel River | 0 | 41k | 330k | 0 | 365k | ||
Cineworks | 5 | 101k | 220k | 36k | 358k | ||
Kamloops Film Society | 21 | 446k | 264k | 4k | 765k | ||
Whistler Film Society | 8 | 192k | 1669k | 62k | 2051k |
Community Theatres in the News
CTV News article March 12 2024
On Feb10 2023 Tyler Olsen of the Fraser Valley wrote:
Can independent cinemas survive in a multiplex world?
The future is uncertain for the Fraser Valley’s remaining independent theatres.
But thriving cinemas in BC's Interior may provide a roadmap to a successful second act.
Scene: a small independent movie theatre. A couple approach the box office and ask for two tickets to a movie that first premiered a couple months ago. They pay their money, take their ticket stubs, and enter a cozy lobby, making a bee-line for the concession.
Moments later, popcorn bags in hand, they push through a pair of tandem doors into a long, narrow room. The screen is large, but not massive. The seats are comfy, but not extravagantly so. This is a movie theatre. It’s not a multiplex. It’s different.
Ten years after Chilliwack’s beloved Paramount Theatre was torn down, the future of the Fraser Valley’s remaining independent theatres is more uncertain than ever. The Hope Cinema is struggling, relying on the charity of its owners and landlord. And in Chilliwack, the Cottonwood 4 Cinemas building and property is listed for sale for $8.5 million (while its operator says they have a long-term lease, the property owner has submitted an application to allow for the construction of condos). Beyond the drive-in, the rest of the independent cinemas are gone.
But the valley might not yet be doomed to a megaplex movie monopoly. Elsewhere in BC, local film-lovers have shown there is another way forward for a community-scale moviegoing experience.
‘Our theatre’
When, the operators of the Hope Cinema took over the theatre during the COVID pandemic, the business came with a heavy dose of responsibility, given how locals feel about the theatre.
“Whenever the citizens of Hope ever talk about the cinema, they always say ‘Our theater,’” said the operator, who asked The Current not to name him for personal reasons.
The cinema was a hub of activity in a community without any other significant public performance spaces. But actually making money and a profit proved to be difficult. The problem, the owners found, is not so much that people have forsaken the movies, but that the entire film industry is now seemingly built around and for theatres with many different screens.
If a theatre-owner could pick the movies they wanted to show and pay a percentage of revenues to the film studios, it would be simpler and easier to imagine a profitable future.
But that’s not how it goes anymore.
Now, the studios behind the most-popular movies expect theatres to reserve an entire screen for new releases. That might not initially sound like a huge problem—you can only show one movie on one screen at a time, after all. But the stipulations are major obstacles for small, one-screen theatres because they mean they often can’t pair a late adult-oriented flick with an earlier family film. Instead, they have to show The Big Movie and only The Big Movie.
It’s not just that. For the biggest movies, theatres often have to commit to screen the movie for weeks on end. In the case of Avatar, theatres needed to commit for four weeks.
Hope’s theatre brought in the blockbuster anyways, but the contract meant that it couldn’t show any other films during that time period.
If the theatre could show, say, Puss in Boots earlier in the day, before a screening of Avatar, it may have been able to double its revenue, the owner said.
“We’d actually have a profitable business if they allowed us to do that,” he said.
The one thing that is working for the Hope Cinema? Community-based events.
The owners bought a stage and PA equipment. They’ve held live-wrestling events, hosted blues, punk metal, classic rock shows, and welcomed stand-up comics on stage. And those nights have generated some of the best audiences for the 324-seat theatre.
“We sold out the auditorium four times in the past year and five months, and those were for private events like film festivals and Rambo and stuff like that.”
A history of competition
It hasn’t always been this way—but upheaval is also nothing new to the Fraser Valley movie-theatre business.
On Jan. 23, 1930, audiences gathered in Chilliwack’s new state-of-the-art theatre to experience what had been advertised as “stupendous productions” that represent the “last word in moving picture art.”
This “last word,” as described by that week’s Chilliwack Progress actually had nothing to do with the pictures on the screen. Instead, it was the soundtrack that was the big thing. Specifically: there was a soundtrack, with the on-screen images matched with sounds and dialogue.
The Talkies had arrived, and with them, a whole new world of movie-going. The moment wasn’t just the culmination of audio-visual technological advances, but of local film-showing competition.
As local historian Merlin Bunt documented earlier this year, the Strand was actually the fourth theatre to open in Chilliwack over the previous two decades. The first theatre seated 250 people and was called the Edison Theatre when it opened in 1910. That same year, a second “movie house” opened nearby called the Lyric Theatre. And three years after that, the Imperial Theatre opened on Yale Road.
You can read Bunt’s full history of Chilliwack’s movie theatres here.
The Strand entered this competitive landscape in 1924—and then re-entered it after a 1926 fire destroyed the original building. The second version of the Strand, which seated 570 people and boasted advanced new technology, put the Imperial out of business and ushered in the Talkies era.
By the ‘40s, Bunt wrote, the Strand itself was in trouble. It was described as “shabby,” and its 570 seats were far too few to hold the massive crowds who wanted to attend the movies. By the end of the decade, the ribbon had been cut for the 900-seat Paramount. Unable to compete, The Strand immediately stopped showing films.
Up for sale
The Paramount had a local monopoly for decades. When Cottonwood 4 Cinemas opened in 1995, it became the city’s first new theatre in four decades.
The Cottonwood 4 had more screens than the Paramount and a convenient location for south-side moviegoers. But the two theatres managed to co-exist for more than a decade. It wasn’t the Cottonwood that would do in the Paramount, but the construction of Cineplex’s eight-screen Eagle Landing multiplex. That competition, combined with the high cost to renovate the aging Paramount, posed too much for the corporate owner of the 70-year-old theatre.
It gave the theatre to the City of Chilliwack, which then controversially opted to tear the building down.
The Cottonwood, meanwhile, has remained operating and found its audience by focusing not on the newest films, but by offering a cheaper, smaller-scale film-going experience. It has also been the home of the Chilliwack Independent Film Festival and shown smaller, more independent films.
The Cottonwood’s operator declined to speak with the Current, only saying via text the business is not for sale and that their contract continues until 2038.
The property’s owners, however, seem to have a very different vision for the site. Less than two years ago, Windbreak Developments Ltd. bought the property for $5.4 million.
They subsequently filed an application with the City of Chilliwack for rezoning necessary to allow them build a six-storey 120-unit apartment building. That application is on hold now pending a development permit application that staff have deemed necessary, according to a city spokesperson.
The site has also been re-listed for sale—its current $8.5-million price tag represents a $3 million mark-up from its sale price less than two years ago.
The listing emphasizes the property’s redevelopment potential.
“Many properties around it are being largely redeveloped and modernized,” it states. “There is currently an over-10,000-square-foot building with a long-term tenant in place. Discussions have begun with the [C]ity of Chilliwack about possible redevelopment of this property.”
If and when the city approves redevelopment plans, it is possible—and maybe likely—that the property owner would try to make the theatre’s operator an offer they might not be able to refuse.
From movies to homes
The Cottonwood listing illustrates how high land values can make it harder for small-scale and art-based businesses to survive.
The potential condo future of the Cottonwood site has already befallen its corresponding theatre in Abbotsford. In 2013, when the new 11-screen Cineplex theatre opened in High Street, the company that operated Abbotsford’s Towne Cinema near the University of the Fraser Valley vowed the site would remain open.
“That theatre does very good business,” Landmark Cinemas’ Neil Campbell said at the time. Sixteen months later, the theatre was closed for good. Just a few years after that, the site was set to be home to a new 250-unit townhouse and apartment project.
Recent months have seen a series of other small-business closures across the valley, including Hemingway’s Books and Birkeland Bros. Wool in Abbotsford, and several restaurants in Chilliwack.
As land has grown increasingly scarce in cities’ central commercial cores, the owners of properties have looked to cash in on their investments. They are increasingly either renovating existing buildings, or tearing them down and building denser multi-use buildings suited for highly profitable businesses that require relatively little room to operate. In such a landscape, a theatre either needs to already own its building, or have a generous and patient landlord (or, potentially, a very long-term lease).
If it has those things—and the Hope Cinema has that patient landlord—there might be hope and a path to success and survival. Indeed, as the movie and theatre business has become increasingly corporate, something else has happened: communities have discovered a new appreciation for local, small-scale theatres. And with that appreciation has come new ideas for how to keep them open.
Saving The Towne
For nearly a century, the Towne Theatre has sat aside Vernon’s main street, its marquee a fixture of the Okanagan city’s downtown in much the same way the Paramount was once the centre of Chilliwack. But whereas the Paramount is gone and the Fraser Valley’s other small theatres are struggling, the Towne is very much alive and kicking, with a promising future.
As the owners of the Hope Cinema contemplate the future, they are looking to follow the script laid down by The Towne and a handful of other Interior theatres.
The Towne isn’t really a business anymore. Instead, it is run as a non-profit by a society of volunteers and funded by not only ticket sales, but donations, grants and fundraisers.
The theatre went the non-profit a couple years ago when its owner sought to retire. A group of film-lovers—the Okanagan Screen Arts Society (OSAS)—had already been successfully showing movies in the theatre for several years, and they leapt at the chance to take over the reins of the facility.
As a business, the Towne would have been fighting the economic and contractual forces challenging theatre owners everywhere. But becoming a non-profit allowed its operators to apply for government grants and solicit donations from a community that truly loved the Towne.
“There was a whole lot of sentiment toward our theatre,” said Susan Hodgson, the non-profit’s secretary. Vernon has multiple arts venues, including a stage theatre, a jazz club, and a city-built performing arts centre. But the theatre was unique and a cornerstone of Vernon’s rejuvenated downtown core.
“I think the community as a whole got behind us partly because they didn’t want to see a big empty space on Main Street.”
The society took over in the midst of the pandemic, and found the early days to be a struggle. But the community rallied to the cause, donating enough money to allow the non-profit to renovate the theatre’s lobby.
COVID was difficult, Hodgson said, “But now we’re rolling along and doing quite well.”
The theatre frequently shows the second-run of popular movies, while screening less-publicized independent movies every Monday. Those human-scale films, which tend to dominate festivals, are some of the theatre’s most popular fare, Hodgson said. (This week it’s showing The Whale, The Fabelmans, Living, and Everything Everywhere All At Once, among other films.) By showing films that have been out for a while, the theatre doesn’t have to worry about restrictive rules from movie studios; those studios are just happy someone is screening their films.
The theatre has also deliberately sought to embrace the diversity of its region, with monthly nights dedicated to Indigenous- and LGBTQ-focused films. They have also started showing anime films to appeal to a younger crowd.
As the Towne has built upon its reputation in Vernon, it’s been able to make money even from films that didn’t do very well in other theatres. In August, the theatre’s agent secured the local rights to show Kevin Smith’s Clerks III when the movie opened the following month. The film did poorly across North America, but it was a hit at the Towne. Indeed, the theatre had the best box office sales for the movie in the continent, Susan said.
The Towne has even begun to show its bigger competitor there could be money to be made in indie films.
“We did so well in October, November, and December, the [Cineplex-owned] Galaxy theatre took one of our movies that we had booked for about four months,” Hodgson said. “They showed it, but we let our theatre-goers know that we were going to be showing it, so they came to us.”
The art of cinema
The model isn’t unique to Vernon. Several cinemas have gone the non-profit route in other Interior cities, including Salmon Arm and Burns Lake—an even smaller community than Hope.
The smaller theatres, whether for-profit and non-profit run, are finding success by emphasizing their community connections and offering different fare than large multiplexes, according to Matthew Hawkins, the Chilliwack-based creative director of Film Ads, which connects advertisers and independent movie theatres across BC and Alberta.
By embracing film as art, local theatres can find their place in a community, and their root to financial sustainability, he said.
“The art of cinema is unlike anything else. It’s different than live theatre, it’s different than an art show, it’s different than a concert,” he said. ”When you have independent movie theatres, which are typically smaller theatres, there’s something that connects better with the community when you bring in independent and unique films.”
Smaller theatres are also finding cost-effective niches that play into their unique strengths, Hawkins said, pointing to theatres like The Gem in Grand Forks that have showings of old movies. The cost to film those movies can be extremely cheap, allowing theatres to make a profit through low-cost tickets and concession sales. The Towne does something similar. Each weekend in January and February, it is showing a different Harry Potter movie.
It’s just one way smaller theatres are finding success by harkening back to the past, while being a part of their town’s future.
“Movie theatres are an essential part of a community,” Hawkins said. He pointed to Salmon Arm, where the theatre donates profits to the town. That money has gone towards building playgrounds and trails, and creating scholarships for local students. The same goes for Burns Lake, he said.
“People love to go see the movies, but they also know their money is going back into the community when they support that theatre as well.”
‘I’m not going to close the doors’
Back in Hope, the operator of the Cinema is looking to those successful non-profits as a potential template to save his (and his community’s) theatre.
Currently, the theatre is losing money but remains open thanks to the goodwill of those operating it and a cut-rate deal on rent.
“It literally should be a charity,” the owner told The Current. But the theatre isn’t closing. Instead, the owner sees hope for Hope Cinema in the success of the Interior’s non-profits.
“I’m not going to close the doors, but I’m searching for the right people who would want to make it a community non-profit organization,” he said. “I don’t want to be known as the guy that closed the theatre.”
CTV News article March 12 2024
On Sept 5th 2024 Tyler Olsen of the Fraser valley Current wrote
"The Hope Cinema is up for sale, but Mayor Victor Smith says the district isn’t planning to buy the beloved-but-unprofitable cultural institution.
In late August, Hope’s theatre was listed for sale for $990,000—a relatively good price for a theatre of any sort in the year 2024. But the price is relatively low for a reason: two different groups have tried to make the theatre work as a business without success in the small community.
The downtown Hope theatre is a beloved institution and community landmark. But nowadays, it’s no longer a place that makes money. That has left its future up in the air. And the local municipality doesn’t appear to be the theatre’s likely savior.
The search for a Hollywood ending
Across Canada, municipalities operate money-losing cultural facilities. They even spend tens of millions of dollars building them for the cultural benefits they bring to their communities.
For decades, the Hope Cinema has played a key role in the cultural life of the area. In addition to movies, it hosts comedy shows, rock concerts, wrestling contests, pride events, and community gatherings. But the economics of being a movie theatre has become increasingly difficult, as The Current reported last year.
Last September, the operator of the movie theatre relinquished his control over the building after trying and failing to make it work as a sustainable business. The community’s love was there, he said. Whenever the citizens of Hope ever talk about the cinema, they always say ‘Our theater,’” the operator—who wanted to remain anonymous for family reasons—told The Current then. But increasingly onerous demands from the movie industry have made showing films an uneconomical business. Indeed, the most popular events were those gatherings tied to community events.
“It literally should be a charity,” the operator told the Current.
A new group of caretakers took over last fall and set about trying to find their own ways to make the business work. But now, a year later, the theatre is closing and up for sale.
Hope Mayor Victor Smith applauded the effort by the theatre’s operators.
“Those two families that ran the thing… they tried everything, did a first class job, worked their hearts out and everything. But they weren’t making money,” Smith said. “It's pretty unfortunate, because I just sent a thing out there to thanking them, because nobody tried harder. And they did try to make that place go right.”
The Current asked Smith if the district was interested in purchasing the property. He said it was not.
Smith said the district is “not into private enterprise.”
Many municipalities around British Columbia do, however, frequently own and operate cultural facilities that are run as subsidized businesses—and which might, in larger communities, be able to even turn a profit. Traditionally, though, cities and towns haven’t bought theatres that focused on movies. They haven’t needed to because, until recently, most sizable communities have been able to support an unsubsidized locally oriented theatre. Those theatres have also been geared toward screening Hollywood movies, limiting their value to the local cultural community.
But in Hope and elsewhere, that’s shifted as small independent theatres have watched the movie business make it hard and financially difficult to screen the most popular films.
In recent years, Hope’s cinema has held a huge array of events to find the audiences necessary to reach profitability. The audiences have come. But they haven’t been enough, and the theatre’s future now seems to depend on either a charity, or a government body, backing its ongoing operation.
Smith says Hope simply has too many other projects going on to spend a lot of money on a theatre. He pointed to the restoration of the Hope Station House and the construction of a spray park and outdoor pickleball courts.
Indeed, while the million-dollar price to buy the Hope Cinema is low compared to most municipal cultural amenities, $1 million is still a lot of money for a community of 7,000 people—on a per capita basis, it’s the equivalent of Abbotsford spending $23 million. Whatever operating subsidy is needed to operate the theatre would bring an additional yearly cost.
While Hope might not be coming to save the theatre, Smith paid tribute to those who had tried to make it work as a business. “Nobody had more heart and soul not placed than those two families.”
