The Orpheum Theater has been a fixture in downtown Kodiak for more than eighty five years – and the community’s only movie theater outside of the Coast Guard base. But that could be about to change, as the owner gets ready to put the theater up for sale.
As part of an effort to clear house, theater manager Geri Ford-Roberts and owner John "Rusty" Fletcher are hosting a series of movie poster auctions. They are hoping to sell off most of the collection, which numbers in the thousands. But during the first sale hosted on April 8 at the theater, the auctioneer only sold a few dozen.
Ford-Roberts said she was disappointed in the turnout.
“As you can tell tonight, the crowd’s very small," she said. "People just don’t get out that much anymore.”
According to reporting from the Kodiak Daily Mirror, the Orpheum opened before 1940, when it was run by Fletcher’s parents. Fletcher was not at the sale and couldn’t be reached for comment. But Ford-Roberts said Fletcher wants to retire and move on to something new.
Movie theaters across the country have suffered since the pandemic. Ticket sales across North America have gone down by more than 30 percent since 2020. The Orpheum closed temporarily in 2020, and posted a GoFundMe asking for funds to save the theater. At the time, they cited the pandemic, rising movie prices, and the harsh winter as reasons for their financial struggles.
Lindsay Knight was the auctioneer for the Orpheum’s poster sale, and a decades-long fan of the theater. He said he’s noticed lower attendance in the past few years.
"I remember waiting in line, and waiting for the whole movie to play to get into the next one," he said. "But that's how movies used to be, I don't see it like that anymore. Me and my friend might be the only two here on a Sunday afternoon.”
The theater announced on Facebook last month that it would not be showing a movie on April 1, and has since extended that hiatus past April 10. The theater's business license also expired at the end of last year, according to state records.
As for who might buy the theater, Ford-Roberts said they have a few options lined up. She said she thinks the Orpheum could be a great opportunity for the right person.
"We're really interested in people who want to keep it as a movie theater," she said.
Others, like Knight, are a little more pessimistic about the building’s future. He said he’s worried, considering the building’s prime location near the marketplace and the mall, that it will end up being converted to another retail location.
As the poster auction ended and people started filing out of the room, Knight spoke with one of the bidders, who bought a majority of the posters. The bidder said he'd been coming to the theater for over forty years, and couldn't believe it might soon come to an end. Knight agreed.
“It is an institution, and you just hate to see it go away," Knight said.
Ford-Roberts said she hopes to get back to airing movies sometime in the next few weeks. Knight said that if people want to support the theater, they should come out to the poster auctions, and go to the movies while they still can.
