PORT ANGELES — The tally inches upward: a little past $187,000 as Scott Nagel and Karen Powell continue their bid to turn the Lincoln Theater, downtown’s shuttered movie house, into a nonprofit film and performing arts center.
Last winter the couple, married business partners, offered Sun Basin Theatres of Wenatchee $235,000 for the Lincoln. The company had closed the 99-year-old theater in March 2014 after deciding it wasn’t feasible to convert it to digital technology.
Nagel and Powell then began the Light up the Lincoln campaign, in hopes of gathering donations for the purchase price and reopening the place as a 480-seat venue for all manner of shows.
The money has come in pledges of tens, hundreds and thousands, including an anonymous $75,000 donation in April. But Nagel’s hope for completing the campaign by summer’s end hasn’t been realized.
Yet he and Powell are unbowed. They’re buoyed, in fact, by Revitalize Port Angeles, the grass-roots group that sent a cadre of volunteers to the Sept. 26 open house at the Lincoln.
More than 350 people roamed the old theater during the four-hour event, Nagel said, adding that he and volunteers counted heads themselves.
And after watching cartoons on the big movie screen, munching on free popcorn and candy and watching a performance by the Shula Azhar dance troupe, many pledged donations.
Some $3,400 came in that day; by the end of the following week the intake reached $5,500, Nagel reported.
“We ran out of pledge forms,” added Carol Sinton, one of the Revitalize members who worked the door.
“A lot of people had memories” of working at the Lincoln, seeing movies and going on dates there,she said.
A frequently asked question, Sinton said: “Can we go to the balcony?”
The answer was yes, and as the people wandered around, they remarked on how the theater wasn’t in as rough shape as they’d expected.
“This is not a dilapidated wreck,” added Richard Schneider, another Revitalize activist.
“Being able to walk in and feel it with all five senses, instead of imagining it in the abstract, was very powerful.”
“We went through five or six giant bags of popcorn,” said Nagel, adding that the salty-buttery aroma did a lot for the atmosphere.
Sinton shares Nagel’s vision for a downtown performing arts center, “a multiuse theater [that] will bring life to the town,” she said, “for locals and for tourists.
“It’s a win-win, if we can get this thing going.”
Downtown Port Angeles is feeling altogether livelier these days, added Sinton, who has been active in Revitalize’s efforts to spruce it up.
For Nagel, the next step is to recruit a volunteer board of directors for a reborn Lincoln, in order to apply for federal nonprofit status. Three open house attendees have submitted applications so far.
Potential board members, like would-be donors, can contact Nagel at 360-808-3940, while pledge forms and board applications are found on the Light up the Lincoln page at RevitalizePortAngeles.org.
“We started with no organization,” Nagel said, and have come a long way thanks to the Revitalize group.
The coalition formed around the same time as the Light up the Lincoln campaign started, he said, and “without Revitalize, probably none of this would have happened.”
Nagel and Powell want to have a Lincoln Theater board of directors in place by the end of November. But there’s a little thing they have to do first: the Dungeness Crab & Seafood Festival, of which Nagel is executive director.
The event, three days of food, drink, music, arts and crafts vending and cooking demonstrations, takes place on the Port Angeles waterfront this Friday through next Sunday, Oct. 11.
But after many months of fundraising for the Lincoln, might Nagel and Powell go to Sun Basin to make another offer, of perhaps $187,000? And when might that be?
“Pretty soon” was Nagel’s response.
“We’re trying to get it wrapped up in November.”
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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.
