Travel writer Rick Steves has spent $2 million buying the single-screen movie theater he has been going to since the 1960s, and he is banking on a return that will never show up on a balance sheet.
The Edmonds Theater sits on the main street of Edmonds, Washington, where Rick is based, and it has been part of his life since the 1960s. He has watched films there next to friends and neighbors for decades.
“I don’t remember exactly, but there’s a very good chance the very first kiss I ever enjoyed was in the balcony,” he said.
Movie theaters across the country are struggling, and Rick decided this one was worth keeping as a place where the town could gather. Alongside films, he wants local nonprofit organizations to be able to use the building as a meeting place.
The building itself needs work, and his plan is to strip it back to the Art Deco architecture underneath.
“It’s pretty threadbare right now,” he said. “It would be quite reasonable to invest a little money in it, and it would sparkle from an architectural point of view as an Art Deco treasure in our community.”
He hopes to break even on the $2 million. The financial case is the part he is least interested in defending.
“Am I going to get $2 million of value out of it? Not directly,” he said. “But I’m going to get the intangible joy of knowing I’m making our community a little more – the fabric of our community is going to be a little stronger.”
When the deal went through, the theater was screening a documentary called The Last Picture Shows, about the struggles of old movie houses across the western United States.
