A Christmas gift for Tooele
By the summer of 2023, Alan and Mickie Bradshaw couldn’t keep the doors open any longer for the Ritz, their Main Street Tooele movie house. The couple had both invested 60 years of their lives working there, first as children, where they’d met — Alan’s family owned the cinema — then, after they married and had children, as volunteers supporting Alan’s father, and finally as owners-operators themselves.
Since its opening in 1939, the Ritz had brought the world to Tooele and on Friday and Saturday nights had been the social mecca of the town’s youth. With the arrival in 1999 of a multiplex in Tooele’s ever-expanding urban sprawl, then streaming and the pandemic, the Ritz’s neon frontage went from being the center of Tooele’s young people’s weekend-world to a forgotten relic of a byegone era. A downtown long-abandoned by shoppers for local strip malls faced a similar struggle to achieve commercial relevancy. Within a block radius of the Ritz there were half a dozen vacant storefronts.
The Bradshaws’ hopes that their real estate agent Steve Griffith would find a buyer for their property while it was still a running concern, whether keeping it going as a movie house or arts venue, had come to nothing. They faced having to sell a building they both loved with no protection or guarantees over its future, despite the Ritz having been listed by the Utah Historic Preservation Office as one of the town’s top four “significant” buildings.
Realtor Griffith grew up close friends with the Bradshaws’ two eldest children. He also had skin in the game since he owned a property adjacent to the movie house. He knew better than most the fate the Ritz faced on the open market. It was a large property with a sloped floor, domed roof and Main Street frontage in the town’s historic district. If someone wasn’t willing to protect it, an investor would in all likelihood tear it down to build a three-floor office building set back from the street. He knew such a building would leave a large hole near the middle of the town’s historic downtown district.
For the city’s economic development director Jared Stewart, having the Ritz permanently shuttered or falling to the wrecking ball when the city was trying to revive the downtown through grants, arts initiatives and new ordinances, would have been disastrous.
Which was why, some felt, there was so much more at stake than the fate of a battered movie house hardly anyone went to anymore.
Popcorn swan song
Pamela Giles grew up on Main Street. Her parents had owned a Western Auto store a few doors down from the Ritz. Every Saturday she’d gone to the matinee. The Saturday she most looked forward to was before Christmas, when after the screening of a festive movie, children would be ushered row by row up to Santa who would hand out treats donated by local organizations.
“The theater was popping, every seat was full,” recalled Giles, who’s also vice chair of the Tooele City Arts Council. “You always got a candy cane and sat on Santa’s lap up on stage.”
Related
The Ritz had also played a central role in shaping her artistic passions. She’d fallen in love with dance as a child after watching “West Side Story” at the Ritz in the 1960s. It had led her ultimately to teaching dance but she had found it so hard to find somewhere to give classes.
The prospect of losing the Ritz, when there was so much art, dance, theater and talent in the town searching for somewhere to exhibit, to perform, was unthinkable. But her fear was even bigger: losing the heartbeat of downtown Tooele. “The Ritz was our touch point, that’s where everybody went,” she said. “If that was gone, then Main Street was gone.”
On June 29, 2023, the cinema held its final screening — “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” — to an almost packed house of nostalgic locals. If Tooeleans had long ago stopped checking what was playing on the neon sign as they drove by, on June 30 those that did found a mordant farewell: “Popped our last kernal.”
Father and son
Part of the reason the Bradshaws had held on for so long was that two years before they had sold their drive-in, the Motor Vu, to Aaron Peterson, a 41-year-old local businessman.
While Peterson’s first priority was buying the land the drive-in sat on for future development — it also came with water shares — he was nevertheless committed to keeping the drive-in open, as long as the community supported it. He valued being part of the community and supporting its youth anyway he could, whether hiring youth to run the drive-in or donating space to a crossfit gym and batting cages to support local kids and a recently begun troubled teens program.
If he was going to run a drive-in, he thought, then he’d better do it right. That meant investing in its future, buying what he believed was the state’s first drive-in laser projector and revamping the concessions stand, which one of his daughters ran. In the summer at least, “It keeps you busy,” Alan Bradshaw told him. “It’s a good job for kids and high schoolers.”
Grantsville-born Peterson’s business roots in the Tooele Valley trace directly back to his father, Roger Peterson, who bought customized steel manufacturer Utah Fabrication in 1997 and one year later moved it to an industrial depot west of Tooele, in part to support the local economy. The area had taken a huge employment hit when a federal cost-cutting program closed the supply and maintenance arm of the Tooele Army Depot, which covered 800 acres, with the loss of 6,000 jobs.
Peterson loved working with his father, crediting him with teaching him to work. “I learned everything I could from him. I grew up working with him in the business and cherished that time. We got on really well.”
Fourteen years later, Roger and Aaron Peterson did a deal that would change not only their lives, but also their town. They bought just over half of the former supply depot with its silos and empty warehouses once used to house tanks and trucks, renaming it Peterson Industrial Depot. It had a total of 450 acres with 54 buildings and over 2 million square feet of space.
“It took everything we had to make a payment,” Aaron Peterson said, declining to comment on the financial details of his business dealings.
Key to their plans for purchasing the depot property was 11.5 miles of rail, along with control over the rail yard, so they could grow their business, Rocky Mountain RailCar Repair, which at that point repaired around 3,500 rail cars a year. What they also had on their land was a plethora of well-constructed Second World War warehouses which with some new infrastructure, individual retrofitting and a lick of paint quickly began to draw companies to the area. “We took it from over 30% occupancy to 98%,” Peterson said.
That purchase “changed our lives and our standing in Tooele County,” Peterson said. “I don’t think we quite understood the potential of bringing it into our business portfolio.”
It also impacted the city. “He is an invaluable partner to have for economic development,” Stewart said. “He’s pretty key to just growth of the community in terms of jobs as well.”
While Peterson had taken on the Motor-Vu, which he renamed the Erda, buying the Ritz did not make financial sense for him. “The ol’ gal,” as Mickie Bradshaw called the movie house, was on her own.
A change in use
In the aftermath of the Ritz’s closing, discussions started to percolate about the opportunity — rather than simply the loss — that the Ritz afforded the city.
On July 10, Mayor Debbie Winn and economic development director Stewart walked Tooele City Arts Council director Pam Green though the theater. They wanted to know if the arts council would be interested in the property, “if it were possible,” to acquire it, Green said. “It was still an if,” at that stage, she added. The board voted to look into it, although board chair Malcolm Walden expressed concern about the nonprofit finding revenue to cover the building’s upkeep, utilities, insurance and other costs. The answer, he learned, could be via fundraisers, galas and other initiatives.
The board’s enthusiasm for the Ritz stemmed from one of the greatest challenges local arts faced in Tooele, namely finding an affordable stage to perform on and a venue to exhibit new works. By building out the Ritz’s stage to accommodate a variety of performance needs, the board felt that the Ritz was very much in line with their mission statement: “to promote, advance and preserve the arts in Tooele City.”
In an early August meeting, Winn shared with Peterson how important she felt the shuttered Ritz was to both their community and the future of downtown.
Winn’s comment on the Ritz struck a chord with the developer. Peterson valued local history, he said. “I think it’s important to keep the old architecture and the downtown feel.” He described himself as less of a business than a community partner. Most of his employees and their children live in the valley and given all he and his family had gained from the community’s support and the opportunities it offered, he sought to give back in similar measure.
“That’s what it takes to run a business in a small town,” Alan Bradshaw said. “You have to be part of the community.”
Peterson talked to Griffith and Alan Bradshaw and once an appraisal had been done, he crunched the numbers to see if it would work financially. “By buying the theater and the surrounding properties the deal penciled out with the tax write-off for the donation,” he emailed. He had done something similar a few years before. Through his business, he and his family had made, as part of a business deal, a $5 million donation of two buildings to the local school district, and then received “a tax incentive on the backside.”
He asked the city if they would take the donation. Winn and Stewart suggested the arts council, which as a 501 (c) 3, would be the perfect home for Peterson’s proposed gift and would allow for the tax write-off. The Tooele City Arts Council had been around for more than 10 years, had an energized board committed to the local arts and are partly funded through the city’s parks, arts and recreation tax. The city was directly connected to the nonprofit through two city council members being on its board.
The arts council’s activities range from running a panoply of arts for children and adults through to putting on concerts. Walden’s favorite is “Fridays on Vine” at the city park. Every Friday evening June through August, the arts group brought bands and artists to perform, including recently Imagine, a Beatles’ tribute group, that drew 800 people.
“To me that’s Tooele in the summer time,” Walden said. “Blankets on the ground, kids running around and playing, talking to friends and neighbors.”
Once the arts council agreed to take the Ritz, Peterson went back to Alan and Mickie Bradshaw to finalize the deal.
The yellow brick road
When the deal was done, the venue’s name would be tweaked to reflect its new role in the community. “The Ritz: Theater for the Arts.”
The venue would be available to local nonprofits, including in the theater, dance, symphony and wind ensembles, while also honoring the building’s history as a former radio station by bringing back music and other performance arts. Tooele Valley theater had suggested interest in supporting improvisational performance and comedy, Green said.
But what of film? What would happen to the theater’s primary artistic role in Tooele for the last 84 years?
The projector would definitely be staying, Walden said. “We haven’t got to the part where (film programming) fits in yet.”
Salt Lake Film Society’s executive director Tori Baker welcomed the saving of the Ritz. The nonprofit screens art house and film classics at two downtown locations, which it both owns and manages. One of them, the historic Tower Theater at 9th and 9th, the society succeeded in purchasing through donor support in December 2022.
A key financial pressure on any nonprofit is paying for the bricks and mortar. Tooele’s donation-model, “is not a bad way to preserve the bricks and mortar of the cinema itself by any means, but it certainly takes it a little farther away from being a cinema.”
She mourned “the dilution of film as the medium for those venues.” When small cinemas become art centers, they too often “become the Swiss army knife of the arts,” she said.
What was key, she argued, was that along with reframing the cinema as an arts venue, the arts council should also reflect its historic function. “It drives me crazy when (a former cinema turned mixed arts facility) does a screening and the rows just don’t have the right feel. It feels like you’re watching a movie in a performing arts facility, which is what you’re doing.” Too often she’s found that old movie houses transitioned to mixed arts facilities do not take into consideration the needs of an audience watching a film. “It’d be really great if the Tooele City Arts Council would think about that as a leading value going forward, and how they’re going to build this out.”
While stressing the arts council’s role in supporting the local arts, Green also acknowledged that film would certainly play a key part in the Ritz’s future. “Continuing its rich history for film, ... (film) will always be in our minds,” she wrote in an email. She’s not aware of a local film society to consult regarding programming ideas, but “the TCAC has plans to reach out to people in these areas — like other small historic theaters in Utah — for advice and guidance in keeping its film heritage alive.”
For now the one concrete film plan the arts council has involves a classic. Green and her board had hoped to reintroduce Tooele to the Ritz with a revival of the Ritz’s annual Christmas treat — an old Christmas movie followed by Santa Claus up on stage before the festive holiday. That wasn’t possible and will have to wait till Christmas 2024. Instead Green is looking to do a fundraising opening in February with a screening of the 1941 Judy Garland classic, “The Wizard of Oz.”
A rebel at heart
By the end of closing, Dec. 21, after 150 hours of meetings and paperwork, and $30,000 on surveys, appraisals and documents, Peterson had bought the Ritz from the Bradshaws and donated it to Tooele City Arts Council. Just in time for Christmas.
In a city newsletter, economic development director Stewart wrote, “Aaron Peterson’s donation of the property — which appraised at nearly $1 million — is a historic investment in the community.” While the Ritz was “fully functional,” he wrote, the city and the TCAC were “working collaboratively on grants to help make theater improvements.”
While the Bradshaws were more than ready to retire, they both struggled to turn their back on the movie house. Alan Bradshaw misses going there seven days a week and many of the cinema patrons he saw as his “regulars.”
Mickie Bradshaw felt like, “I’ve been put out to pasture.” Even the resident ghosts, she said, were ready for new faces. When she went to the Ritz in October, she turned the key in the front door and heard in her ear, “What are you doing here?”
Just checking on things, she replied.
Peterson’s saving the Ritz for the community was “the answer to our prayers,” Alan Bradshaw said. To Mickie Bradshaw, it also meant something to “the ol’ gal” herself. “She’s excited to have all these new people coming in and looking around. It doesn’t have that sad feeling when I walk in now. She’s kind of like ‘I can’t wait for my facelift, see all these new people, see what’s going to happen.’”
When it came to how the Ritz felt about becoming a mixed arts facility after eight decades as a cinema, Mickie Bradshaw paused for a moment, then grinned impishly. “She’ll probably rebel a little when they start pulling out seats.”
Peterson understands what the Bradshaws’ investment of sweat equity and love for their community in the Ritz have meant to this town, even if in their anonymity it’s not always recognized. He wants to make sure the Bradshaws won’t be forgotten when the Ritz gets its makeover and plans to put up a plaque dedicated to them on the Ritz’s frontage, so passersby will know what they did for their community.
Peterson is not a great movie lover. He was excited for “Top Gun” to play at the drive-in but you get the sense he just doesn’t have the time to watch much celluloid.
He hasn’t seen Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” something that surprised Alan Bradshaw. “You haven’t?” he said, gazing with something approaching awe and disbelief at Peterson, who, as he looked back down at him, with a certain wry smile, might, at a pinch, in a certain light, just be graced with a touch of the George Baileys.
