Utah Theater to retake center stage
Downtown SLC » City Creek, Broadway playhouse and now a film center could be main players in a revived Main Street.
J. R. Howa stands in the Utah Theater's seating area. All the chairs have been removed and the bones of the building exposed. (Paul Fraughton / The Salt Lake Tribune)
By Rosemary Winters
and Sean P. Means
The Salt Lake Tribune
Layers of chipped, ornate molding in the lobby and broken light bulbs on the marquee hint at glitzier times for the Utah Theater. Shuttered for two decades, the 1918-built playhouse languishes as a reminder of the decline of Salt Lake City's Main Street.
But, like Main, the Utah Theater is on the cusp of a renaissance.
Salt Lake City's Redevelopment Agency has agreed to terms to buy the show house and adjacent storefronts for $7 million. The sale could be finalized this fall after the agency completes a building inspection and lines up financing.
Then the one-time vaudeville stage could return as a first-of-its-kind-in-Utah film center.
J.R. Howa, the son of Rick Howa, the owner of the property, walks down the long entryway into the lobby of the Utah Theater. (Paul Fraughton / The Salt Lake Tribune )
"Main Street is coming back," said Rick Howa, the developer who has owned the Utah Theater for the past decade. "I feel good about downtown Salt Lake for the first time in a long, long time."
The Salt Lake Film Society, SLC Film Center and Spy Hop Productions want to transform the Utah Theater -- provided they can raise funds for a $25 million-plus renovation -- into a venue for independent films, media-arts exhibits and educational programs.
"I can think of very few bits of information that have come forward in the past 20 years about Main Street that hold as much promise and excitement for downtown," said Stephen Goldsmith, a former Salt Lake City planning director and a professor at the University of Utah. "This can become a magnet to diversify the offerings in the heart of the capital city."
Goldsmith predicts a "spillover" effect on Main Street. A film center could generate new camera shops and spawn housing geared toward film professionals. A revived Utah Theater, Goldsmith added, would draw a diverse group of people to Main, breathing new life into the streetscape.
Across the street, the city envisions a 2,400-seat Broadway-style theater. A block to the north, the gigantic City Creek Center already is reshaping Main Street.
"If we're able to develop this [film center]," Mayor Ralph Becker said, "we really will have a wonderful coalescing of performance art venues in downtown Salt Lake City."
The ornate columns and ceilings inside the Utah Theater. (Paul Fraughton / The Salt Lake Tribune)
The goals are lofty. The Salt Lake Film Society, which now runs the Broadway and Tower theaters, would screen first-run independent and foreign flicks at the new Utah Theater screens. The SLC Film Center would bring its slate of community screenings, which play now at the city's Main Library and other venues. And Spy Hop would bring its training facilities for teen filmmakers.
The proposal laid out by the three nonprofit groups also envisions educational programs in media arts, Sundance Film Festival screenings and archives, offices for nonprofit and government film organizations, and even temporary office space for visiting movie productions.
Other centers -- such as Maryland's AFI Silver Theatre and the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, N.Y. -- mix first-run film exhibitions with community programs. But bringing in the industry "hasn't been done anywhere else," Tori Baker, director of the Salt Lake Film Society, said. "This may be the model for art houses in the future."
The question mark is money. A similar proposal was pitched during the 2009 Legislature, with a request for a $25 million bond, but it fizzled. The total cost of the center is expected to top $25 million but that amount could cover the theater renovation.
Salt Lake County Councilman Joe Hatch said the project now has a better shot at state funds, noting some legislators were hesitant to fund a film center that lacked a location.
"Now the city has stepped up and provided property," Hatch said. "That's a big step going forward."
Hatch, a "film fanatic" and member of the SLC Film Center board, said such a center would help lure moviemakers to Utah, which already offers spectacular natural backdrops.
"A great industry that brings really great jobs is the sort of thing we like," Hatch said. "For a very modest amount of economic-development bucks, you get a huge return."
The county, which has identified the film center as one of its top cultural projects, doesn't have the resources to fund the project now, Hatch said. But it could in a few years as City Creek Center starts generating sales taxes and payments for the Real Salt Lake soccer stadium shrink.
The film center will happen "soon, if we get a positive commitment from the state," Hatch said. "It will happen later if that doesn't happen -- but it will happen."
Details of the deal
Salt Lake City's Redevelopment Agency has 90 days for "due diligence," including an appraisal and environmental and structural studies.
The agency then has 60 days to decide on the purchase.
If the sale goes ahead, the city pays $7 million to Rick Howa's companies for buildings at 144 S. and 156 S. Main.
While three nonprofits iron out plans to create a film center, the city could spruce up the theater's facade and bring businesses into the storefronts.
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