Proposed deal for Fresno’s Tower Theatre means we’ve reached start of the end game
It took 16 months worth of protests, lawsuits and widespread teeth-gnashing, but we’ve finally arrived at the space on the chessboard where the Tower Theatre dispute was headed all along.
The city of Fresno’s proposal to purchase the historical theater and its neighboring properties for $6.5 million is more check than checkmate. Current tenant and want-to-be-buyer Adventure Church still has room to maneuver, and by all indications will legally challenge getting elbowed out of the sale.
However, Thursday’s Fresno City Council action item, co-sponsored by Councilmembers Esmeralda Soria and Miguel Arias, should finally begin to bring down the curtain on this unfortunate drama.
Two months ago, when Adventure Church officials filed suit against the Tower Theatre’s owners for supposedly reneging on an agreement to sell the building to them, the schism between formerly aligned parties was clear enough. That the Abbate family needed an escape hatch must’ve also been clear to Soria and Arias.
After that, it was only a matter of whether city officials could come up with an arrangement that satisfied Laurence Abbate and his siblings as well as the owners of Sequoia Brewery who filed suit to protect their own contractual rights.
For all the talk about eminent domain (i.e. a hostile takeover by the city), the Abbates turned out to be willing sellers after all.
Anything to bow out ASAP of the culture war they helped unleash in Fresno’s most liberal, LBGTQ-friendly neighborhood.
But not before granting permission to organizers of a recent car show to park a full-sized truck and other vehicles under the Tower Theatre’s covered exterior lobby — and atop the original 1939 Art Deco terrazzo tiles.
Oy vey. Fresno can’t rescue this cultural and historical landmark soon enough, and offloading a couple of the adjacent properties (such as Sequoia Brewing and other restaurant spaces) will make the $6.5 million price tag more palatable.
A public takeover is one of the better potential outcomes of a bad situation. My biggest qualm is with Soria and Arias’ financing plan. While Measure P certainly has an arts component, the city’s 3/8th of a cent sales tax is not a piggy bank for politicians to tap into whenever convenient and without a robust public discourse.
So far, however, provisions designed to prevent that very thing from happening don’t seem to be much of a barrier.
Tricky situation for Dyer
Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer offered only a lukewarm statement regarding the proposed sale. Why? Well, because this is one time when Dyer and members of his administration are only too happy to let the City Council take the lead.
I don’t believe Dyer ever wanted the Tower Theatre sold to a conservative evangelical church, if only because of the controversy that would create. But it’s tricky for a conservative evangelical like himself to say so publicly without alienating his base. (Some of whom received quite the jolt last June when Dyer changed his mind and allowed the Pride flag to be raised outside City Hall.)
Based on the statement sent to local media by their attorney, David Emerzian, Adventure Church isn’t going to walk away without a fight. But whether church officials really have the stomach for a long, protracted legal battle with California’s fifth-largest city is another matter.
And by “church officials” I don’t mean pastor Anthony Flores, the loudmouthed lightning rod who, as way of taunting protesters opposed to the sale, threatened to dangle the keys to the theater from atop its neon-lit spire.
I mean The Foursquare Church, the “evangelical Pentecostal Christian denomination” (as described by Wikipedia) with 2,000 churches and congregations across the U.S. (according to its website) headquartered in Los Angeles. Earlier this year, the denomination sold its former headquarters (an eight-story building in Echo Park) for a reported $51 million.
Foursquare would appear to possess the assets to keep the Tower Theatre sale tied up in court indefinitely. But legal frivolities aside, that sure seems like an awful lot of resources to expend on a church led by the likes of Flores, whose public behavior falls well short of any acceptable standards for a faith leader.
No, we haven’t heard the end of this saga. But this is surely the beginning of the end game.
