PORT ANGELES — The Light Up the Lincoln campaign to buy and reopen downtown’s shuttered movie house is looking to turn supporters’ pledges into actual donations by the end of the year.
With some $185,000 promised over the past nine months by people who want to see the theater turn into a nonprofit performing arts center, Light Up the Lincoln organizer Scott Nagel said Thursday he’s almost ready to make a deal with Sun Basin Theatres, the old cinema’s Wenatchee-based owner.
Nagel, executive director of Port Angeles’ Dungeness Crab & Seafood Festival for the past 14 years, made Sun Basin an offer of $235,000 a year ago this month.
Then, with his wife and business partner, Karen Powell, he began the explaining and fundraising process.
With your support, they told would-be donors, the Lincoln can become the county’s center for concerts, plays, film festivals, company parties and other events, reinvigorating the downtown and drawing name acts from across the continent.
Ranging from $20 to $10,000, the pledges have come in — but they were just that: promises to pay.
Fiscal sponsorship
To collect the funds and allow donors to write their contributions off on their 2015 income tax returns, Nagel has entered into a fiscal sponsorship agreement with the nonprofit Olympic View Community Foundation, formerly known as the Sequim Community Foundation.
The agreement means Olympic View will process and manage the funds while designating them as tax-deductible charitable donations, said Sue Ellen Riesau, executive director of the 15-year-old foundation.
“Letters are going out today, calling in the pledges,” Riesau said Thursday.
She added that more information, donation forms and an appeal for more support were being posted Thursday on Olympic View’s website, www.ov-cf.org, as well as on the Light Up the Lincoln page at www.revitalizeportangeles.org.
Contributors will be able to make secure donations via those portals, Riesau said. They can also reach Nagel at 360-808-3940 and Riesau at 360-797-1338.
Board of directors
Nagel and Powell have also been busy recruiting a board of directors for a reborn Lincoln Theater.
There will be seven volunteer directors, Nagel said Thursday, though he would list only two who are confirmed: John Brewer, publisher emeritus of the Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum, and Michael McQuay, co-owner of the Kokopelli Grill in downtown Port Angeles.
The rest of the directors will be announced next week, Nagel said.
He also plans to apply for federal nonprofit status for the Lincoln Theater and expects that process to take about a year.
Report in January
As for the fundraising, Nagel said he’ll issue a report in January; then he means to start final purchase negotiations with Sun Basin Theatres.
“We have several things coming together,” he said, such as major donations and ways to structure the deal.
Yes, this has taken quite awhile, he acknowledged.
All along, the Lincoln’s marquee at 132 E. First St. has read “building for sale.”
Listing agent Dan Gase of Coldwell Banker Uptown Realty has shown the 98-year-old theater to several parties, but Nagel and Powell, as makers of the offer, are the buyers in first position, Gase has said.
Yet “we can’t really do anything,” Nagel said, “until we have the money in the bank.
“We’ll be ready to make a deal after the first of the year.”
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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.
