Column in The Bee was wrong. The Tower Theatre does not need rescuing nor church ownership
Can a church be the “savior” of Fresno’s historic Tower Theatre? That’s what Joe Mathews argues in his July 18 Fresno Bee op-ed “Best way to preserve Fresno’s historic Tower Theater might be to accept church ownership.” But Mathews, who lives in Southern California and doesn’t know Fresno, is mistaken on several points. The Tower Theatre doesn’t need a savior. Adventure Church isn’t going to preserve the Tower Theatre. And placing a church in the middle of Fresno’s nightlife center threatens the Tower District’s economy.
It’s difficult to take Mathews seriously after he says that the Tower Theatre needs a rescuer because “it can’t support itself as a movie house in the era of Netflix.” Fact check: the Tower Theatre has been a live performance venue for the last 30 years. Nor is the Tower Theatre in financial trouble — The Bee reported last year that “the Tower Theatre was coming off a great 2019 and expecting to have an even bigger 2020 before the pandemic hit.”
Mathews calls Adventure Church an “ideal steward” of the Tower Theatre, but the church has made no promises to preserve the Tower Theatre’s historic architecture or its place on the National Register of Historic Places. And it’s hard to see how Adventure will maintain the Tower Theatre as a performance venue when major arts organizations like Reel Pride, Fresno Filmworks and the Rogue Festival refuse to work at a theater owned by a non-gay-affirming church.
But the central issue is that the church’s operations at the Tower Theatre violate zoning law. The Tower Theatre is not zoned for public or religious assembly. The current zoning of the Tower Theatre isn’t a discriminatory anti-religion measure. Under the Tower District Specific Plan, the Tower Theatre is meant to be an economic driver for the neighborhood, offering a wide variety of programming and attracting a diverse audience who will patronize the neighborhood’s restaurants, bars and nightclubs. A church, for all its spiritual merits, can’t serve this economic function.
Placing a church in the middle of the nightlife district also threatens the future of bars and restaurants in the Tower District. The California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control can deny liquor licenses within 600 feet of a church. This doesn’t mean existing businesses will lose their licenses instantly. But making the Tower Theatre a church, even for incidental use, will create a problem for new liquor licenses and license transfers. Anything that can prevent new restaurants from opening in the Tower District is a threat to the Tower economy. Tower District entrepreneurs shouldn’t have to live with that kind of uncertainty.
Some people might say that a church is always better than a bar or nightclub, but the residents of the Tower District won’t agree. Bars, clubs and restaurants play a necessary role in keeping the Tower an arts-friendly, LGBTQ-affirming neighborhood. The bars and clubs are venues for musicians and other performers and centers for the gay community.
Ordinarily, a zoning change this drastic can’t happen without public meetings. But Adventure Church hasn’t applied for a rezoning—it just breaks zoning law every Sunday, creating a de facto zoning change with no public input. And the city of Fresno, for whatever reason, is declining to enforce its own zoning laws. Through inaction, the city is allowing a situation of effective discrimination: A conservative evangelical church is allowed to break the law, and gay-owned businesses receive no protection from the law.
The residents and business owners of the Tower District deserve a say in the future of their neighborhood. And we will keep fighting to get our say.