ORPHEUM Theatre; Kenosha, Wisconsin.

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(Kenosha News: 2/1/2000) Orpheum Theater closes; BID official ‘would like to help Jeff’

The future of the Orpheum Theater is once again uncertain. The second-run movie theater, 5819 Sixth Ave., closed over the weekend.

Jeff Maher, who saved the building from demolition several years ago, acknowledged Monday that the theater was closed, but would not make any further comment at this time.

In November, when Johnson Bank and the Kenosha Area Business Alliance filed for foreclosure on a $365,000 loan issued to the theater several years ago. Maher said he hoped to keep the theater open.

But John Bechler, KABA president, said the closure of the theater over the weekend was not directly related to the foreclosure.

“We are in the process of foreclosing along with the bank, but this must have been the owner’s decision, that he was losing money and shut the door,” Bechler said. “This wasn’t a forced closure on the part of the bank or KABA.”

Ruth Granger, Lakeshore Business Improvement District (BID) manager, said the BID would like to retain the theater and Maher as owner.

“We have identified that building as our priority project for the district, to retain the theater,” Granger said. “It’s too early for the BID to say it will acquire or help Jeff. We’d like see him stay.” Granger said the group is going to work to find some investors to help redevelop some of the property.

Once the first residents of the new Harbor Park lakefront developments move in, business will pick up in the downtown area, Granger said.

“I think if he could hold out a little bit longer, it’s going to come,” she said.

The four story, 16,184-square foot building originally opened on March 14, 1922, but showed its last first-run movies in the 1970s.

It was once owned by Twentieth Century Fox Studios, but changed hands in the 1970s and again between late 1992 and early 1996. The building survived several close calls with the wrecking ball before being designated a historic landmark in 1993. Maher bought the building in 1996.