There are wants and needs for Guadalupe, resident Shirley Boydstun told the Sun, and while a renovated Royal Theater would be nice, it’s not needed.
“It’s a wonderful offering; it is a beautiful drawing for a city that has more money and the ability to handle it. We’re not there yet, that’s for sure,” Boydstun said.
The Royal Theater is a federally designated historic building that opened in 1939 as a movie theater. It was owned by a Japanese-American family before President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order that forced Japanese families to relocate to internment camps during World War II. When the family returned to Guadalupe after internment, they never got ownership back.
“From the very beginning when we started this project, I have heard … 100 people telling their story of going to the theater. There’s so many people who remember going to the theater in its heyday,” project manager Thomas Brandeberry said during a June 18 special City Council meeting about the project.
The renovation project proposes to revitalize the historic building with a new state-of-the-art movie theater, an amphitheater, and a performing arts center that could host live stage productions, musical events, educational and cultural programs, and provide a meeting space for local organizations. The city, which has been discussing this project for nearly a decade, received about $10.5 million in grant funding from the state and federal governments in 2023 to cover construction and renovation costs.
However, inflation and rising costs increased the price tag to complete the project, and the city now finds itself $3 million short. Facing grant deadlines and a compressed timeline to get an item on the ballot, the Guadalupe City Council voted 4-1 (with Councilmember Eugene Costa Jr. dissenting) to ask voters to pass a general obligation bond measure to bridge the funding gap. If the bond passes, residents could see an additional $77 in property taxes per year on average, with rates fluctuating depending on a home’s value.
The bond measure needs to receive a four-fifths vote again from the City Council during its June 25 meeting—after the Sun went to press—in order to be added to the ballot by Santa Barbara County’s June 27 deadline. If it’s added to the November ballot, it will need a two-thirds majority vote from Guadalupe voters.
While residents voiced support for the project, many said they felt skeptical about additional property taxes. Come November, Guadalupe’s bond measure would be on the ballot alongside a $194 million bond measure from the Santa Maria Joint Union High School District and Santa Barbara County’s proposed transient occupancy tax increase.
During both the June 11 and June 18 special meetings, residents also raised questions about the theater’s ownership and long-term sustainability—and if there’s a Plan B should the measure fail.
Guadalupe Mayor Ariston Julian told the Sun that the city is drafting a request for proposal (RFP) to identify a nonprofit owner, and it’s looking at alternative revenue sources—like fundraising or capital campaigns—while moving the bond measure forward in order to meet the June 27 deadline.
“We need to make sure that we have what we need in the future; we need to do that now,” Julian said. “One council member mentioned when you plant a tree, you may not get the shade of that tree, but others will get the shade of that tree.”
This isn’t the first time the city has agreed to invest in its future. In 2020, Guadalupe residents approved a tax increase to fund public safety, and in 2022, city voters passed a bond measure for the school district.
“The other two were fine; they were very much needed,” Guadalupe resident Boydstun said. “It’s hard to turn down schooling and children. Like I say, there are needs and wants. To me, the theater rejuvenation is a wish, but there is not a need.”
She added that she isn’t sure if another capital campaign or fundraising effort will be successful in the city.
“We just don’t have the people here who could shell out the big amounts like they used to. Some of the farmers, some of the people who have done well in the past, those people are gone. Those are the old families, the ones you could count on,” Boydstun said. “We don’t see anybody that has that kind of capital, or at least I don’t.”
The city received $4.8 million from the federal government’s Economic Development Agency and $5 million from the California Arts Council to fund the renovation project through a capital campaign, project manager Brandeberry said. Those funds were originally slated to be enough to cover costs, and the city didn’t find out from its consultants until April that it would be $3 million short.
“The reason we have a gap in funding is when we originally got the price, we went out and talked to historic tax credit and new market tax credit consultants and hired attorneys because we were told we were a highly competitive community to get those tax credits,” he said.
The consultants later told Brandeberry and the city that investors are not interested in the theater renovation because they want to fund medical, educational, or manufacturing projects, he said.
“We were surprised by this and have spent since April trying to find solutions to a $3 million gap. The only one that seemed feasible to get done that kept the project operating [and] sustainable was a bond,” Brandeberry said.
The project manager and city staff also explored commercial loans, but they’d have $68,000 payments due every six months, he said.
“You can’t put that on the operator, and the city would have too much of their general fund go away,” Brandeberry said. “We haven’t finished looking; there are other options, but until those options come up, the bond has to go forward.”
At the same time, Brandeberry and the city are gearing up to release the RFP to identify a nonprofit that could own the building, manage the theater and performing arts center, and run programming once it’s developed.
“In a lot of situations, you have a nonprofit that comes along and says, ‘Hey, look at this building. I’d like to take it and work on renovating it,’” Brandeberry said. “Usually, it doesn’t come from a city wanting to renovate and find an operator. That’s an unusual way of doing it, which is why there isn’t an operator in the first place.”
Part of the RFP process will ask about long-term plans and sustainability practices. He added that the city’s also planning for a long-term financial support system for the nonprofit once they get up and running. However, the funding shortage has also halted the RFP process.
“One of the worst-case scenarios is we end up not having enough money, period, and we will only have enough money to have a movie theater. No performing arts center, no amphitheater, no plaza, just a historic building that shows movies—a very different operator than a performing arts center,” Brandeberry said. “We’re going forward with an RFP for a performing arts center, but that may change if we don’t have the money to do the whole project.”
While he would prefer that the community didn’t have to pay $3 million for this project, he said he believes that Guadalupe deserves the reimagined Royal Theater in its entirety.
“I’ve been here since 2016, and this project has always come up as an important project economically, socially,” Brandeberry said. “I still get back to the same thing: This community deserves this whole project, and I’m sorry people have to pay through property taxes to get this, but they should; it’s worth it.”
Reach Staff Writer Taylor O’Connor at [email protected].
