It was opening night for the 2022 Aspen Film Fest, and Susan Wrubel had the jitters.
Not necessarily for the start of the festival, though.
Before Aspen Film’s executive and artistic director could head to the kickoff party, she had to find out whether Aspen City Council would vote for Aspen Film to buy the Isis Theater from the city.
“I was a nervous wreck,” she said in a phone call Wednesday morning. “I was informed by many people that there should be a layup, and, you know, not to worry, but you just never know until you know.”
Now, she knows. Aspen City Council unanimously approved the sale at a meeting Tuesday afternoon. And Wrubel got to take the news right over to the Wheeler Opera House to kick off the film festival.
“Not only was it unbelievable to hear the outpouring of support from the city, but it was just so great to be able to share it with the community literally after it happened,” she said. “So, last night was truly joyous.”
But the sale wasn’t “an option so much as a requirement,” city finance director Pete Strecker said at the meeting.
Aspen Film has been leasing the space from the city for a decade and a half. And that lease allowed the the nonprofit to eventually buy the space for just $10 once a big chunk of debt on the building gets cleared away.
City officials, Aspen Film and a retail firm struck a deal in 2007 to buy the Isis in order to “save” it and preserve the building’s role as a theater.
The city leveraged its credit to buy the building for about $8.5 million, then leased it back to Aspen Film and the retail group.
Rent payments chipped away at the debt, and the retail firm already bought its section of the building in 2019.
Just under $2.1 million of debt remains on the movie theater section, which makes up most of the money Aspen Film will have to fork over to buy the Isis. The sale is set to close Oct. 14.
An anonymous lender is helping Aspen Film cover that total, Wrubel said.
“We had had somebody take the debt piece out, and it gives us a little bit more runway to raise capital and raise capital to do some augmentations to the theater in addition,” she said.
The nonprofit has a capital campaign in the works and a number of fundraising efforts already in play for the organization.
And when City Council approved the sale, it also gave the OK to remove a restrictive covenant on the naming of individual theaters.
The Isis will still be called the Isis, but donors can now name each of the four screens in the complex if they wish. That, too, will help raise money, Wrubel says.
“We are definitely looking for community support, but you know, we're going to need some big slugs of cash to get us to the finish line,” she said.
Those “augmentations” Wrubel mentioned will include some ADA accessibility improvements and upgrades to concession areas.
She says the work includes a stage in the main auditorium for live events and an education space downstairs with editing bays for students.
The work would happen in phases starting next year so that parts of the theater can stay open, Wrubel says.
Aspen Film tapped Bow Tie Management, a professional movie theater management company, to help with operations at the Isis. Bow Tie also operates the Movieland theater in El Jebel, as well as four other theaters in four different states.
The Moss family that owns the company has ties to the Roaring Fork Valley and the community’s local nonprofits.
“They understand this community: Both Charley and Ben Moss, the principals, are part of the Aspen community, so they really understand very well who's here,” Wrubel said. “It just really made sense to move forward."
The Los Angeles-based Metropolitan Theaters previously wrangled day-to-day operations and sublet the theater space from Aspen Film.
Their lease ended 2020, but Aspen Film gave Metropolitan several extensions to ensure that Aspen would still have movies playing on the screen, Wrubel said.
“The space was technically theirs, and we had limited usage rights,” she said. “Now we can basically dictate what we want on screens (and) when.”
The new setup will be a partnership that gives Aspen Film more autonomy over what’s playing.
There will still be commercial movies on a couple of the screens, but Aspen Film now has the leeway to show more arthouse films and to host community events in the space, Wrubel says.
“Aspen Film always has a screen at our disposal to do things, whether it's a one-off that we want to show or to offer it to a partner organization,” Wrubel said. “And that's something that we haven't really had the ability to do previously.”
Metropolitan took over the Isis after the theater had gone through the turbulence of several management changes (and a bankruptcy filing by one operator) in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
It was under the same ownership for three decades before that, as Aspen residents Kitty and Dominic Linza owned the theater from 1968 to 1998.
The Linza family recently donated three decades' worth of original movie posters from their tenure at the Isis to Aspen Film to support the organization’s fundraising efforts.
The memorabilia is part of Posterfest, which runs in tandem with the Aspen Film Fest this week as a fundraiser for the organization.
The theater opened more than a century ago and operated for decades as a one-screen movie house before it was remodeled into a more commercial multiplex in the late '90s.
Wrubel recognizes that historical significance, as well as the role the theater has played in the Aspen community.
“This is a beloved community asset, … and I've spoken with a lot of people over the last couple of years about the Isis, saving the Isis, what that means,” she said. “And there are several stalwart community members, I will say, who feel that Aspen is not Aspen without the Isis, and nobody wants to be in a community like this without a movie theater.”
But it hasn’t been an easy couple of years for the Isis — or for movie theaters anywhere.
Council members acknowledged just how far the theater has come in the time since.
“It's been a challenging time,” Councilwoman Rachel Richards said. “We had some faith in your ability to go forward, and so we've been in partnership. And just when I saw this in our packet coming forward, I was astounded that where you've taken it from a few years ago to where it is now.”
The enthusiasm that the council and the community has shown for the news is a testament to how much Aspen cares about the Isis, Wrubel said.
“It felt like a really triumphant night, and we could not be more proud, grateful, appreciative, excited,” Wrubel said.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct a typo in the years that the Linzas owned the Isis. They were at the helm from 1968 to 1998.
