PORT ANGELES — An anonymous donor has pledged $75,000 to the Light up the Lincoln campaign to reopen downtown’s shuttered Lincoln Theater as a community arts center, fundraiser Scott Nagel announced.
The sum is a matching grant, Nagel said, which means he must bring in another $75,000 in pledges from the community to collect the donor’s dollar-for-dollar match.
“[We] are in the home stretch,” he said Friday.
In an announcement he has been preparing for weeks, Nagel added that so far, $85,000 in pledges has been made since the Light up the Lincoln effort began in February.
So this new pledge “is what we were hoping for,” he said.
Another $75,000
First, though, another $75,000 in pledges has to be raised. Then the donor’s match of $75,000 will be added, bringing the total up to $235,000, the amount Nagel has offered the Lincoln’s owner, Sun Basin Theatres of Wenatchee.
James Hallett, owner of the Hallett Advisors financial planning firm and a Port of Port Angeles commissioner, served as the go-between for this latest pledge.
It comes from a donor who knows the community, Hallett said, and who feels strongly about the Lincoln project.
Over the past two weeks Hallett, Nagel and the supporter have been going over the plans for a restored Lincoln Theater, and finally, said Hallett, “the donor said, ‘Great; we’re ready to go forward.’”
Nagel and his wife and business partner, Karen Powell, have been strenuously explaining their plan since December: Turn the theater at First and Lincoln streets into a 500-seat venue for concerts, plays, film festivals, lectures, dance performances and parties — a new nonprofit organization, providing a place for touring acts as well as local ensembles.
Nagel and Powell, both of whom have run festivals on the North Olympic Peninsula and in Seattle — Nagel is head of Port Angeles’ Dungeness Crab & Seafood Festival every October — see the Lincoln Theater as a catalyst for community vitality.
Website for pledges
Nagel collaborated with Revitalize Port Angeles, a new group of local residents, to put the Light up the Lincoln campaign online, so donors can go to www.RevitalizePortAngeles.org to make pledges.
Nagel’s number, 360-808-3940, is also on the site for those who want to talk with him directly.
As of last week, 144 people had pledged amounts ranging from $25 to $10,000, Nagel said.
“Now we just need to repeat that,” or close to it, to get the $75,000 match.
“We’re going to do this,” said Nagel, “and it’s going to be awesome.”
The Light up the Lincoln campaign was originally just a month long, with a deadline of March 23 to raise the $235,000.
That was based on Nagel and real estate agent Dan Gase’s agreement with Sun Basin Theatres to bring in the purchase price by the end of March.
At this point, Nagel said, Sun Basin is still willing to work with him as he raises the last portion.
The Lincoln marquee, however, continues to read “building for sale,” as it has since a few months after the Lincoln was closed in March 2014.
“Someone could jump in and buy it out,” Nagel said, but after this much fundraising, “we don’t think it’s too likely at the present time.”
Instead, his eyes are on the Lincoln’s rebirth as a nonprofit center, much like old theaters in other cities around the country.
Stories of such theaters, along with architect Michael Gentry’s renderings of a new Lincoln, are on the Light up the Lincoln page at www.RevitalizePortAngeles.org.
All along, Hallett and Nagel acknowledged, there have been skeptics and observers with negative attitudes.
“There are always going to be people who say, ‘This won’t work,’” Hallett said.
Yet “there are some really generous people in this community who get it” and give.
The anonymous donor, Hallett added, is one who understands what the Lincoln Theater symbolizes: a place for the arts in this town.
On that front, “it would be fun to look back on 2015 as a seminal moment of success.”
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
