Best way to preserve Fresno’s historic Tower Theater might be to accept church ownership

Have a little faith, Californians.

Even if you can’t stand your local churches, you might find them to be valuable saviors — of your historic and endangered movie theaters.

So, please think twice before joining a holy war like Fresno’s fight over the historic Tower Theater.

The Tower is a 1939 Streamline Moderne gem anchoring an artsy neighborhood of known as the Tower District. But, like so many of California’s signature old theaters, it can’t support itself as a movie house in the era of Netflix. So, the theater’s owner is trying to sell the place to the ideal steward of such a theater: a growing church that can fill seats, raise money for maintenance, and keep the theater open for shows and community events.

Such sales make sense, but can be complicated. Many growing churches are non-traditional, evangelical, or politically conservative, and don’t fit the secular entertainment districts where you find old theaters. In wise communities, churches and their neighbors look past their differences and focus on their shared interest in saving the old buildings. That’s what happened with two other Fresno theaters, Hardy’s and the Wilson, when churches moved in.

But at the Tower, the church and the community have escalated conflict and eschewed collaboration, turning a neighborhood problem into statewide controversy.

Long story short: the Tower Theater owner allowed Adventure Church, a largely Latino congregation already located in the Tower District, to hold services there during the pandemic. And when Tower’s owner decided to sell, the church agreed to purchase it.

But when word of the purchase agreement leaked, many Fresnans, taking note of Adventure’s opposition to same-sex marriage and LGTBQ rights, rallied against the sale as an attack on the neighborhood. Weekly Sunday protests were held. The anti-church protests soon drew counter-protestors from right-wing groups, and police erected barriers to keep them separate. Someone — it’s not clear whom — raised the political temperature by displaying a tribute to the late talk show host Rush Limbaugh on the theater marquee.

The conflict grew from there. One restaurant on the Tower property sued to block the sale, saying it was entitled to purchase the theater. Fresno’s mayor offered the church an alternative property, which Adventure turned down. Other city officials suggest taking the theater by eminent domain.

If Fresno can find a theater savior less problematic than Adventure, that would be wonderful. But there are reasons to doubt whether a relatively poor city government or a restaurant can maintain a costly historic theater. If Adventure is the best option, church and community should stop fighting and start talking.

Yes, compromise with an anti-gay church sounds odious. But a keep-your-enemies-close approach makes more sense. Adventure is already in the Tower District, whether it occupies the theater or not. And if you’re going to have put up with such a church and its proselytizing, why not benefit from its presence, by getting it to fix up and preserve the Tower?

I’ve witnessed this more conciliatory approach bear fruit in two California places. One is Redding, where the huge and controversial Bethel Church (with its own problems on LGTBQ issues and a pursuit of miracles like resurrecting a dead toddler) and its members helped form a non-profit, Advance Redding, that saved the city’s failing auditorium, which now offers a wide variety of programming.

The other theater is the Rialto, in my own San Gabriel Valley neighborhood. The theater, famous as the murder scene in Robert Altman’s “The Player,” and as a date spot for “La La Land‘s” lovers, sat vacant and decaying for years until Mosaic Church, a mega-church with congregations from Hollywood to Mexico City, arrived.

There was some resistance to the church’s arrival. While I liked the young, diverse congregation, Mosaic is not for me — your cynical columnist, attending services, cringed at the pop-style music and the over-the-top sermonizing.

But, three years later, Mosaic is undeniably a neighborhood asset. The church repaired the theater, and opened the place for events and movie screenings. The last film we saw before COVID hit was a Mosaic-sponsored showing of “Miracle on 34th Street,” the Christmas classic about having faith in people whose beliefs we do not share.