My View
VOTE YES ON ARTICLE 1
By Michael Kopko
On Thursday night at 7 p.m. at the high school, our community will have the opportunity to determine that the Dreamland theatre will be there for generations to come. In the bargain, we have a chance to make a place for a community performing arts center, a home for the many arts organizations that are working out of church basements and cubicles in other peoples' lobbies.

We're not inventing the wheel here. Many communities have successfully taken municipal action to save theatres in their core districts.

We've had a preview of how a private commercial approach would work: residential condos, seasonally occupied and dark all winter; an underground parking garage 20 feet from the Easy Street bulkhead; restaurants and retail, and, assuredly, the ultimate demise of the Dreamland movie theatre. Rick Ulmer made a valiant and community-minded attempt to do the right thing commercially and privately. It has become clear that, if we want to have a say in whether the Dreamland stays or goes, we need to do it together, as a community. As a wise former chairman of the finance committee once said, if you want to control something, you need to own it, or words to that effect.

Imagine a Dreamland building that has the movie theatre restored, looking like its old self, with the latest movie-showing technology, open every summer for generations to come. Afull stage in the main theatre for concerts, meetings, lectures, recitals. Available all year 'round. A performing arts center on the second and third floors, with a small theatre, studios, teaching and practice rooms. Offices for our many arts organizations, who make Nantucket a more special place.

Imagine this building lighted, warm and busy all year 'round, with classes, concerts, plays. People coming and going. A vibrant, glowing anchor in our downtown. Folks having a reason to be downtown in the off-season. Going out to dinner, shopping, just, well, being a community. The economic development aspects of this are so important. All of the businesses downtown will benefit.

Now, we have an opportunity to do more than imagine. We can start planning and doing. If the town buys the theatre, the threat of losing it is gone. The next step is for private nonprofits to get to work. One would commit to capitalizing the renovation of the building structure and the movie theatre. The operation of the movie theatre would be put out to contract, on a long-term lease. This gets us to a safe building and the movies showing and popcorn popping. Next, a nonprofit, or consortium of nonprofits to design, build and operate the top floors as a community performing arts space. Once the theatre is up and running and the building is made whole, there will be time for this phase to play out. The idea is that all of the renovation and operations will be paid for by private nonprofit funds.

What we do next is crucial. If we vote on Thursday night to purchase the Dreamland, we won't be committing to anything just yet. A ballot vote will be scheduled to ratify the appropriation of the funds, probably sometime in late September. The intervening two months will give the proponents of the project plenty of time to put together funding and plans to present to the town. At that point, citizens will have the opportunity to vote the project up or down. We should give this idea a chance to work. Keep an open mind, and remember that all we are doing on Thursday is deciding to give this proposal a chance. If it doesn't come together in a way that makes sense to the community, we can decide at the ballot that it's not for us.

Save the institution that is the Dreamland theatre for the future. A performing arts and community center in the heart of town. An engine that drives a revitalized year-round downtown economy. The opportunity is here and now, and if we don't take it, it will be gone. For good. If you believe, then please come to the Special Town Meeting at 7 p.m. on Thursday, at the high school. And bring a friend. Or two. Or twenty.

Think of all the times that we as a community have let opportunities like this pass us by, only to regret them later.

See you at the meeting. I