CITIZEN KANE
By Tim Kane
Staff Oped Columnist
WARE – Back as a teenager growing up in Auburn, my sister used to bring me with her boyfriend to the Elm Draught House Cinema in Millbury on Friday nights.
It was a refurbished old cinema house, quite similar to Ware’s deteriorating Casino Theater. The Elm Draught House, which is still open today, offers $5 movies in a cool throwback one-screen theater, where movie-goers can buy beers by the pitcher and wines by the jar. A grill out back behind the seats serves burgers, mini pizza and traditional popcorn. The theater seats even have side foldout tables to accommodate food and drinks, and owners stack up pillow pads to provide customers with more seating comfort.
It is exactly the type of B-movie theater environment that could thrive here in Ware on Main Street, if current Casino Theater owner Fred McLennan could ever get his financing together.
The plausibility of that in fact happening looks rather bleak, however.
Last Friday, the town took serious steps to possibly raze the structure, altogether. There’s talk of leveling this historic building to create a new municipal parking lot, if in fact engineers hired by the town rule it to be unsafe to remain a standing structure.
Honestly, this opinion columnist’s stomach turns at the thought of Ware hosting Memorial Day on Monday next to this gigantic eyesore with metal safety fencing invading half of Veterans Park. That is a real shame and disservice to those who fought and died for our country.
More than one year ago McLennan rode into town on a white horse to save the casino theater, which dates back to 1909. He told us then, “If everything goes as planned, if we are successful with our negotiations, we should be putting some marquee letters up this year.” The only letters I see there read, “Ware deserves a theater”…
It is now halfway through 2010 and the place looks worse than the day he bought it.
Don’t get me wrong. McLennan is the real deal, a movie theater buff with other renovated theatres under his belt. He was involved with the restoration of Boston’s Orpheum Theatre and the Metropolitan Theatre, which is now the Wang Center. This paper has supported his project from day one.
This takes me to last Friday where my own personal thinking on the renovation’s reality was re-adjusted?
When asked why absolutely no renovation work had begun on the property other than the erection of ugly scaffolding, McLennan blamed his lack of financing on online newspaper blogs promoting alleged erroneous misinformation that he bought the building for $1 from the Goldstein family.
“We have people [investors] in Hawaii and California. We had investors. But they are getting the wrong impression,” claims McLennan last Friday while staring at engineers from CBI Consulting in Ware’s Tower 1 ladder truck assessing his roof. “Misinformation is out there on blogs. This was not sold for $1. There is a fear factor.”
According to the Ware town assessor’s office on Tuesday, McLennan actually did pay $1 for the property. Therefore, unless there was some other financial negotiation between families not on the books, his claims of misinformation driving investors away is a lesson in revisionist history.
Yes, Mr. McLennan, we know the sordid details: The theater façade you see today is attached to the earlier wooden structure. The exterior stucco wall was put on top of modern foam insulation, which is why that side of the building is bulging. “Looks like they overbuilt this in the 1985 renovation. Too much sheetrock,” says McLennan. “The façade is really Styrofoam.”
Despite the lack of financing, this theater buff maintains a vision of what could be. He envisions rocking chair seats, a concrete floor, new steel beams, rebuilt gabled roof, and new screen showing a mix of children and adult movies.
That said, it is probably not a good idea to get into an argument with Ware’s town manager on Main Street under the scaffolding during a structural engineering analysis.
That actually happened last Friday with McLennan refusing to allow engineers along with the fire chief, police and engineers inside the structure. He actually filed a motion in court May 19 to prohibit interior access based on safety reasons.
“They can’t get access into the tresses so what good would they determine from going inside,” says McLennan.
He further claims an “identical survey” was done in April 2009, adding that the former town manager, Steve Boudreau, could have torn the building down. The new town manager may very well do just that.
The engineering assessment cost the town $4,990, which McLennan will have to re-pay along with the $12,000 in back taxes he owes the town – not to mention the town’s bill for installing the silly safety fencing. Town Manager Mary Tzambazakis says results from that report will take two weeks to finalize before being handed over to selectmen for a decision on next steps.
If I had to guess, and I truly hope I’m wrong, the days of the historic Ware Casino Theater are numbered.
Perhaps this latest fiasco will awaken a sleeping giant – with money.
– Tim Kane is editor of the Ware River News and the Quaboag Current. He writes a frequent news opinion column titled “Citizen Kane.” Email him at: tkane@turley.com.
Turley Publications staff photo by Tim Kane Ware Fire Department’s Tower 1 ladder truck was employed by engineers from CBI Consulting of Boston as a means to assess the stability of Ware Casino Theater’s roof last Friday.
Ware Reader Forum 