Morgan Hill
– When the
”
For Sale
”
sign appeared at the Granada Theater this week, heads turned. A
$2 million price tag turned heads even further.
Morgan Hill – When the “For Sale” sign appeared at the Granada Theater this week, heads turned. A $2 million price tag turned heads even further.
Whether the well-worn building is worth $2 million is a matter of opinion, said John Telfer, the Realtor handling the sale for owners Ed and Irene Enderson.
Ed Enderson said he decided to ask for $2 million because of the downtown building’s uniqueness and potential.
Telfer said he has received quite a few calls during the short time the theater has been up for sale.
The Granada, closed in 2003, also includes the space occupied by the adjacent Morgan Hill Tobacco Company. Owners Wyatt Miller and Gene Palermo have a lease through 2009. Miller, through an employee, said he had no comment now on the sale or whether he would consider buying the building.
Local businessman Manou Mobedshahi has 29 years left on a lease on the two-screen theater, built in 1952. He is negotiating a possible sublease with Mike Wilkinson of Colusa.
Downtown backers claim the theater is the keystone to revitalizing downtown.
“Nothing is more important than the Granada,” Sellers said about downtown’s future.
Mobedshahi did not return phone calls.
The City Council last week voted to move forward in negotiating with Wilkinson a loan/grant mix totaling $1,095,000.
Bill Newkirk, who is handling the city end of the project for the Redevelopment Agency, said the deal is not set.
“The $1 million has been earmarked for the project but there are still quite a few knots to be untied,” Newkirk said.
Wilkinson’s proposal includes a $700,000 loan at 3 percent payable in 15 years with interest payments starting three months after the theater opens; a $310,500 grant largely to preserve the building’s historic aspects and a $45,000 façade grant.
“It would be difficult for me to take over the full financial burden of the Granada,” Wilkinson said recently.
The old theater needs structural changes, to handle three proposed screens, plus new paint, seating, carpeting and rest rooms, to say nothing of sound and projection systems. Wilkinson isn’t expecting the city to pay for everything but he’d like a deferred three-year loan on funds covering the historical aspects.
“If all goes well, I’m hoping to open before next summer,” he said.
Wilkinson said he doesn’t intend to compete with mainstream first-run movies at Cinelux Theatres in Tennant Station.
“It will be mainly art and foreign films and a mixture of classics, maybe a midnight show,” he said.
The Endersons met at the original Granada Theater in 1948 when he, now 81, was the projectionist and she, now 71, worked the concession stand; they’ve been married for 53 years. Enderson said his wife was reluctant to sell the theater, but they decided that was the best course.
