BING CROSBY THEATER GETS A FACELIFT

Improvements to the Bing Crosby Theater are creating a buzz. Jerry Dicker purchased the downtown Spokane landmark 10 months ago and went to work.There’s a new high-definition movie projector and screen that will soon be wired into a new surround sound audio system. The leaky roof has been repaired. New heating and air conditioning systems are making the theater more comfortable. And a new outside sign is lighting up the theater’s east side at night.

Events have been filling the theater’s 756 seats, and there is now demand for even more shows in the historic 1915 movie palace at 901 W. Sprague Ave.

“The Bing is going really well,” said Dicker, a real estate investor and developer who has become a major figure in historic preservation in Spokane.

He paid $1 million to classic car collector Mitch Silver last February to buy the Bing, with plans to sink at least $500,000 and probably more into renovation and upgrades.

“He is going to have a product that people will want to visit,” said theater manager Michael Smith, who is expanding the range of events.

Movies shown at the theater are varied: Some claiming to push intellectual thought are coming to the theater on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for early evening entertainment, and Smith is talking about hosting a film festival featuring amateur videos shot by people wearing GoPro helmet cams while skiing or skateboarding.

A Bing cinema festival is planned to open Jan. 19 with a showing of the James Bond thriller “Dr. No” and other classic films. The theater will serve martinis that are shaken, not stirred, during the 1962 Bond film. Other showings will be vintage rock concerts redone with digital sound.The theater also is preparing to provide live streaming video for incoming and outgoing shows. It is also being equipped to create digital recordings for later sale.

There’s talk of a new live comedy series called “Bada Bing.”

“It’s going to be fun here,” Smith said.

“We want people to look at the Bing and say there’s always something happening there,” added Dicker.

The theater is reaching out to the community for partnerships.

One of those is with Christian Youth Theater Spokane, which is staging “The Little Mermaid Jr.,” starting on Feb. 22 for seven performances.

“I love CYT,” Dicker said.

At some point, the theater will be turned over to a foundation and board to run as a nonprofit, Dicker said. But he wants to get improvements funded and in place before that happens.

The project list keeps growing. Space on the third and fourth floors overlooking Sprague Avenue and Lincoln Street could be renovated for use as a lounge, event center or possibly even a Bing Crosby museum.
Dicker has purchased a private collection of Crosby memorabilia for future display. He said he would like to work with Gonzaga University, which also has an extensive collection.

“We reach out to as many partners as we can,” Dicker said.

Helping with renovation and remodeling is Jared Mauer, who specializes in historic buildings. The original Ivar Peterson murals that decorate the interior were repaired and touched up by Melville Holmes, and Jaye Nordling, an expert in sound and lighting, has worked as a consultant on the technical improvements.

Tickets to events include a $2 charge for theater restoration.

Built as one of the country’s most elaborate movie palaces, the former Clemmer Theater drew audiences to the luxurious surroundings of an opera house. It retains that character today. It was placed on the Spokane Register of Historic Places in 1990 and the national register in 1998. Dicker said he believes it is one of the five best historic buildings in Spokane.

During the 1920s, live acts performed between movies, including one in 1925 with Spokane’s own Bing Crosby. The Oscar-winning “The Sound of Music” movie ran at the theater – then called the State – for a city record of 54 weeks in 1964 and 1965, according to the historic register nomination.

The former Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities Co. bought the theater and renovated it for a reopening in 1988 as the Metropolitan Theater of Performing Arts, or The Met. Smith was hired that year and has managed the theater since.

Silver acquired the theater in 2004 and agreed with Bing Crosby fans to rename the theater the Bing in 2006 to commemorate Spokane’s beloved stage, screen and recording star. Dicker’s acquisition in February came through his GVD Commercial Properties Inc.

A block to the south at First Avenue and Lincoln Street is the artsy Hotel Ruby and Sapphire Lounge in a renovated 1950 motor inn, another of Dicker’s projects.

The theater is trying to keep costs affordable by charging rents of $500 to $800 for nonprofit groups. But show organizers have to agree to spend a few hundred dollars on advertising or promotions to ensure a crowd turns out.

“We don’t want people renting the theater and not producing an audience,” Dicker said...

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BING CROSBY THEATER SOLD!

Buyer plans to improve Bing Crosby Theater
By Tom Sowa
The Spokesman-Review PrintEmail

Spokane's historic Bing Crosby Theater, a downtown entertainment landmark, has been purchased by area business developer Gerald V. Dicker.

Dicker’s GVD Commercial Properties Inc. paid $920,000 to the previous owner, Mitch Silver. Silver, who owns a collectible vehicle auction company, bought the building from Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities in 2004.

Dicker said Thursday he will invest in major renovations and upgrades to the building. “We are doing that in part to have more events in the Bing,” he said.

“In the future, I believe this building could become a major tourist draw for Spokane,” Dicker said in a news release.

Built in 1915, the theater at Lincoln Street and Sprague Avenue was originally called the Clemmer. It later became the State, and then the Met, before Silver changed the name again in 2006. The name recalls Bing Crosby’s early history, as he performed in the Clemmer in the 1920s before moving to California.

Dicker will retain the name and develop the theater into a showcase of Crosby memorabilia. Over the past few years he has helped acquire several thousand photos of the singer.

Dicker also said he’s gratified to be able to keep Michael Smith, the theater manager for the past 25 years, in that job.

The building is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Dicker owns several area businesses and properties. He owns and operates the Hotel Ruby and Sapphire Lounge at the corner of Lincoln and First Avenue. GVD Northwest LLC also bought majority interest in the former Burgan’s Fine Furniture building at 1120 N. Division St.

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BING CROSBY THEATER FOR SALE

FOR SALE SIGN GOES UP IN FRONT OF BING
By Ian Cull

SPOKANE, Wash. -- If you've ever wanted to own part of Spokane's history, now's your chance as the Bing is on the market.

"Built in 1915 with 756 seats in the Bing Crosby Theater, one of the sales pitches is there's not a bad seat in the house," owner Mitch Silver said.

Walking down through the Bing Crosby Theater and onto the stage one gets a sense of the history of the place. This is the stage where everyone from Big Crosby himself to Pearl Jam has performed.

If you've ever wanted to own part of Spokane's history, now's your chance as the Bing is on the market. KXLY4's Ian Cull reports.

Silver is asking $1.3 Million, $100,000 more than what he bought it for. He's enjoyed it but says now its time to leave the Bing behind.

"The economy in the last three years, if I was rolling in the dough and had money coming in hand-over-fist, I'd have no problem hanging onto this," he explained.

There are, however, a few upgrades that need to be made. Cracks in the sidewalk are causing water to seep into dressing rooms, which will cost $9,000 to fix. The roof also leaks at times and needs to be replaced, which will cost the buyer another $60,000.

Still, Silver says it's a steal compared to the other theaters in town for a piece of local theatrical history.

"Extremely affordable for what this building is," Silver said...





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BING'S 108TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION

On May 3, 2011 the 108th birthday of Bing Crosby will be celebrated with "Classic Movies at the Bing." The celebration is put on by the Advocates for The Bing Crosby Theater. The great theater is located at the corner of Sprague and Lincoln in Spokane, Washington. (I sometimes hate being an Easterner!) A $5 donation is suggested with all proceeds go to supporting future movies:

Country Girl Screening & Bing’s Birthday Bash
Tuesday, May 3

-Free cake and punch starting at 6 p.m.
-Assortment of Bing Crosby short features on the screen.
-Feature starts at 7 p.m.

The Country Girl was unlike any movie Bing Crosby had made before -- a serious study of a man in crisis. For his performance as an alcoholic actor wilting under the pressure of trying to re-establish his career, Bing was nominated for an Oscar. His character is bolstered by a devoted wife with the strengths he does not have. Grace Kelly -- also playing counter-type as a doughty housewife -- won the Oscar for Best Actress for her performance. She finds in William Holden the strengths Bing’s character does not have. Who wins her?

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THE BING CROSBY THEATER

The Clemmer Theatre, as the Bing Crosby Theater was originally called, opened in 1915. That is also the year many film historians consider the beginning of the modern era of the motion picture. These important events all occurred in 1915: • An attempt by Thomas Edison and other inventers of movie-making equipment to control the production and distribution of movies was finally defeated in the courts. Filmmakers were released to experiment and competition spurred them on. • D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” premiered and set the standard for all future films. Griffith’s movie created the language of modern film, with thematic narrative, naturalistic acting, and “shots” inter-spliced to tell a smooth story. • Charlie Chaplin left his old film company and started making his own, more nuanced kind of film comedy. His “The Tramp” and “The Bank”, both released in 1915, set a new standard for comedies, just as Griffith had set the pattern for drama. • In 1915 theater owner Carl Laemmle traveled from New York to the tiny town of Hollywood, California, where he established the first modern film studio. His Universal Pictures Company was soon followed by Warner, Fox and MGM, and a new industry was underway. The Clemmer Theater played a part in this transformation of the movie industry. As late as 1912, the typical movie theater was a converted storefront with a sheet on the wall for a screen and benches for seats. Then a few New York entrepreneurs realized that it was not just the content of movies but also their settings that was limiting their appeal. These entrepreneurs built the first “movie palaces”, theaters that looked like opera houses and seated thousands. The first two were the magnificent Regent and Mark Strand Theaters in New York City, both built in 1913. The first of the luxurious Roxy Theater chain opened on Broadway in 1915. The idea was to shed the slightly disreputable image of movies and lure all classes to them. Just the fact that a more educated class started attending movies had an effect on their content. Movies moved from the amusement park model to the theatrical model. The Clemmer was in the first wave of this movie palace tradition. It opened before more famous theaters, such as Los Angeles’ the Million Dollar Theater (1918) and Grauman’s Chinese Theater (1922). The Bing Crosby Theater is one of only a handful of these very early movie palaces still in existence. After its first decade, The Clemmer was scooped up in a campaign by movie studios to own the theaters where their films were shown. Paulsen and Clemmer sold their interests to Carl Leammle’s Universal Studios in 1925. The new manager, Roy Boomer, decided to try to generate interest by hiring live acts to perform between movies. One of the performers he hired was a local jazz drummer and sometime singer by the name of Harry Crosby( aka Bing Crosby). In 1929, Universal sold the theater to a new Spokane owner who renamed it the Audian. Two years later the theater changed hands again and became the State Theater. Operating under that name for the next half century, it became a fixture of Spokane’s entertainment scene until it closed as a movie theater in 1985. The building was purchased by the Metropolitan Mortgage Company and completely renovated before reopening in 1988. Its stage was enlarged and it began a new life as a theater for live shows under the name of Metropolitan Theater of Performing Arts, “The Met.” When its sponsor, the Metropolitan Mortgage Company, went out of business in 2004, the theater was purchased by Spokane businessman Mitch Silver and continued its roll as a venue for touring shows and for local organizations that use it as their home stage. In 2006, a citizens group received Silver’s permission to rename the theater and raised money to build a new marquee. It has been The Bing Crosby Theater ever since...