Eminent domain option ‘sounds awesome’ to this co-owner of Fresno’s Tower Theatre
Now that the owners of Fresno’s Tower Theatre block are being sued by the same conservative church they agreed to sell to, whose leaders are bent on waging a culture war in the city’s most liberal neighborhood, the eminent domain option might be the best way out of this mess.
One of the historic theater’s co-owners agrees.
“That sounds awesome,” Andrea Abbate told me recently over the phone.
Andrea Abbate is Laurence Abbate’s older sister. If not for their mother, Aileen “Dotty” Abbate, and her devotion to Fresno’s performing arts community, the much-loved vintage theater at 815 E. Olive Ave. and its surrounding buildings would’ve been razed into a parking lot decades ago. In fact, one can state rather definitively that without Aileen Abbate, the Tower District itself as we know it would not exist.
After “Dotty” died in 2004, Andrea Abbate said the property’s ownership passed down to her five children. They agreed Laurence would assume its management and operations.
Andrea Abbate is a Fresno native who has spent the last 25 years living in Los Angeles and writing television comedies. She has no plans to move back — or get heavily involved in the proposed sale to Adventure Church that is mired in controversy and legal limbo.
“We all have our own lives,” Andrea Abbate said of her three brothers and sister. One of her brothers, who lived with her and her family, recently died.
When we spoke last week, Andrea Abbate was not aware of the day-old news that Adventure Church had filed suit against her family for purportedly breaking its agreement over the sale. So I filled her in on the latest twist.
“There was no way to envision any of this would happen,” she said in a regretful tone.
I contacted Andrea Abbate because I wanted the perspective of a family member other than Laurence, who does not return my messages. I wanted to know if they shared his convictions and/or motivations regarding the sale. How they felt about the Sunday protests outside the theater that have now stretched 13 months.
Turns out, Andrea Abbate and Laurence Abbate do not think alike politically. Nor do they share religious views. However, Andrea told me her brother is “a responsible person with his feet on the ground” and someone whose opinion she trusts even when they disagree.
Controversy caught theater owners by surprise
Andrea Abbate made it clear she wants the Tower Theatre sold. She said the theater was near bankruptcy and that Adventure Church made the best offer (the church’s lawsuit says $4.8 million) even though the block-sized property wasn’t up for sale on the Multiple Listing Service.
Because the church had been leasing the 81-year-old theater and holding services there for several months with little fuss, the controversy that erupted when news of the sale went public in January 2021 caught the family by surprise, Abbate said.
Nor did they expect the matter would drag on this long.
However, Andrea Abbate said her family’s options were limited as soon as they entered into a legal contract with Adventure Church.
“Once you’re in a contract, you’re stuck,” she said. “Now it’s too late.”
Too late to prevent her family from being embroiled in a multi-headed legal dispute.
Besides the latest Adventure Church filing, which asks the court to sell the property to them and have the Abbates pay their legal fees, the Tower Theatre owners are already on the hook for the legal fees incurred by tenant Sequoia Brewing following a January ruling by the 5th District Court of Appeals. (How that decision impacts the sale of the theater itself remains unclear.)
Meanwhile, the city of Fresno continues to make moves hinting at a future eminent domain action. Such an application of eminent domain would be exceedingly rare, according to a Southern California attorney who specializes in the field.
All along, I’ve believed eminent domain would only be employed by Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer and the City Council as a last resort. After all other options for keeping Adventure Church from purchasing the Tower Theatre had exhausted themselves.
But now it’s starting to seem like the easiest way out of this mess. And at least one member of the family who saved the Tower Theatre from destruction and transformed the Tower District into Fresno’s nightlife and entertainment hub shares that view.
