This is from the Las Vegas Review-Journal on 3/13/91:
Triumph and loss. Conflict and conciliation. Suspense and intrigue. They’re the dramatic elements you’d find in a good movie. But you can find the same elements off-screen -playing now at a theater near you. Las Vegas' volatile movie theater scene has undergone some upheavals in recent weeks-some large, some small.
Late last month, a two-screen independent theater, the Torrey Pines Cinema, closed after less than a year of trying to compete with local first-run theaters operated by well-established circuits. By next week, the three-screen Mountain View Cinema- which shut its doors late last year-will reopen as a locally operated discount house.
What could be the most significant change of all, however, showed up at the Las Vegas Drive-in: the suspense thriller “The Silence of the Lambs,” which has been the nation’s top box-office attraction for four weeks running. The presence of a box-office hit at Las Vegas' only remaining drive-in theater might not seem at all unusual. But “Silence of the Lambs” is an Orion Pictures release. San Francisco-based Syufy Enterprises operates the Las Vegas Drive-in. And “Silence” is the first Orion release to play a Syufy theater in Las Vegas in more than five years.
Orion and Syufy officials became tangled in a protracted contract dispute after Syufy balked at playing Francis Ford Coppola’s 1984 drama “The Cotton Club.” In turn, Orion refused to license its pictures to Syufy theaters. In Las Vegas, that meant Orion releases played at theaters operated by rival United Artists, which bought the locally owned Roberts chain in August 1987. Until now.
While “Silence of the Lambs” continues to play at UA’s Paradise 6 and the UA-affiliated Gold Coast Twin, its presence at the drive-in signals a peace treaty in the longtime Orion-Syufy war. “I guess there comes a time when whatever it is that makes people not do business together goes by the wayside, and you do business,” said Syufy general manager Jack Myhill in a telephone interview from the company’s California headquarters. “It’s possible we’ll play some of their pictures in Las Vegas. We’re hopeful our relationship is going to be rebuilt.”
That could happen as soon as next month, when Orion is scheduled to release “F/X 2,” but may be unable to book it at the Gold Coast if “Silence” and Kevin Costner’s Oscar favorite “Dances With Wolves” continue their strong runs. “These things happen-wars don’t last forever,” said UA’s Charles Boeckman, who formerly booked the chain’s Las Vegas theaters. “Other companies have been out with other exhibitors for a long time and they come back.”
Clouding the picture further is the fact that UA’s three Las Vegas theaters are up for sale. Only the Paradise 6 shows first-run movies on a consistent basis; the Sunrise 7 and Cinema 8 are both discount houses. (UA also books the Gold Coast Hotel-Casino’s two-screen theater, which shows first-run features.) But the Syufy-Orion truce “isn’t even a criterion” in the decision to put the theaters on the market, said Robert Vallone, general manager for UA’s Western theaters. UA’s top management has “decided that a lot of states don’t fit into their core,” Vallone said. “For years, we were basically a coastal company- California, Florida, all the Eastern Seaboard.” Selling the Las Vegas theaters is part of a “back to basics” move, he commented.
Boeckman said that speculation surrounding a Syufy-Orion truce had been circulating for “over a year.” But Orion’s box-office success with its two recent hits “might have speeded things up, who knows.” The hit status of Orion’s “Dances With Wolves” and “Silence of the Lambs” at the Gold Coast also affected the Torrey Pines Cinemas, which picked up two other first-run Orion releases, Woody Allen’s Oscar-nominated “Alice” and the science fiction action thriller “Eve of Destruction,” before it closed Feb. 28.
The Torrey Pines filed for reorganization Feb. 8 under Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Act and remained open while showing “Alice” and “Eve of Destruction.” According to court documents, Torrey Pines operator Ted Pantazis owes more than $200,000-including, his landlord alleges, almost $69,000 in rent for the theater, located in the West Sahara Town Center at Sahara Avenue and Torrey Pines Drive.
On Feb. 25, however, the Torrey Pines filed a motion to dismiss the bankruptcy case, stating Pantazis wanted to file an anti-trust case against various movie distributors and could not do so unless the bankruptcy filing was dismissed. According to the motion filed by Pantazis attorney Eleissa C. Lavelle, the Torrey Pines had doubled the gross revenues of previous months with its first-run showing of “Alice.”
“The greatest impediment to the success of the (Torrey Pines) … has been the inability … to obtain quality first-run films from film distributors, which (Pantazis) believes "may be the result of illegal agreements with (Pantazis') only competition in this market,” Lavelle’s motion states.
The “only competition” referred to is Syufy, which owns and operates 32 screens at the Cinedome 6, Redrock 11, Century 12 and three-screen Parkway walk-in theaters, as well as the four-screen Las Vegas Drive-in. Syufy has been the target of numerous lawsuits, including a 1986 Justice Department suit alleging the chain has conspired to monopolize the Las Vegas movie market by buying out its competitors, which previously operated the Redrock, Parkway, Fox Charleston and Cine Boulevard theaters. (The Fox Charleston was demolished and the Cine Boulevard closed in 1989, after six unsuccessful months as a discount theater.)
Booking the critically acclaimed “Alice” in January signaled a breakthrough for the Torrey Pines, according to the theater’s bankruptcy affidavit, “and it was anticipated following that breakthrough, that additional quality, first-run films would be forthcoming.” But the bankruptcy petition, filed to give the Torrey Pines “sufficient time to reorganize its debts, in anticipation of its receipt of the first-run movies over the next several months” instead “has had an unexpected, unforeseeable adverse effect, in that the film distributors have now completely refused to allocate any additional films” to the Torrey Pines, the motion alleges.
Lavelle declined to comment on the motion because it is scheduled to be heard March 26 in Bankruptcy Court. Some industry observers, however, attributed the Torrey Pines Cinemas' problem to its small size, location and lack of a track record in drawing audiences.
One of the theater’s first attractions was a first-run showing of “Gremlins 2: The New Batch,” which “performed poorly” at the Torrey Pines, said a distribution official for Warner Bros., which released the movie, who asked not to be quoted by name. The movie “did much better” across town at the Syufy-operated Century Desert 12, he said. Even box-office returns on “Alice,” which court documents stated had doubled the theater’s grosses, were “awful,” said Boeckman. “I don’t have the Vegas (box-office) charts, but I know the gross was low. I compared it to the last Woody Allen picture, which I think was `Crimes and Misdemeanors,‘ which I think did 10 times better” at the Gold Coast.
The Torrey Pines may have had a promising Spring Valley location, “but it’s very difficult today to operate a theater with two or three screens,” said Syufy’s Myhill. The Torrey Pines “should never have been built,” said Don Lesh, former operator of the Huntridge Theater who will be running the Mountain View Cinema when it reopens as a bargain house. “It’s a very nice theater, but what do you do with the damn thing?” Its two screens provided inadequate competition for Syufy’s six-screen Cinedome and 11-screen Redrock in western Las Vegas, he said.
The Justice Department’s 1986 suit was one of the few antitrust cases pursued during the Reagan Administration, but it lost the case in February 1989, when U.S. District Judge William Orrick of San Francisco ruled in Syufy’s favor with a ground-breaking opinion that cited recent entertainment breakthroughs including home video and cable television. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Orrick’s decision in May 1990. The Solicitor General declined to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Last month in a related case, U.S. District Judge Irving Hill granted Syufy a summary judgment, dismissing monopoly charges in a lawsuit the Roberts Co. filed in 1984, when the group operated the Mountain View and Huntridge theaters. (Roberts subsequently built the Paradise and Sunrise and acquired the Cinema 8 from another theater operator before selling out to UA.) Syufy’s legal victories may signal a tough road ahead for the Torrey Pines, said one observer who asked not to be quoted by name. “So the guy’s going to sue,” he said. “If the Justice Department can’t beat Syufy, then how can he?”
The Syufy case “established some very good law from their point of view,” said Dallas attorney Edwin Tobolowsky, whom Pantazis consulted regarding possible legal action. Tobolowsky has “represented a lot of motion picture exhibitors, independent theater operators who have had difficulty in obtaining first-run pictures,” he said during a telephone interview from Dallas.
On behalf of the Torrey Pines, Tobolowsky “wrote letters to all the major studios asking for the right to license movies free of any bids,” Tobolowsky said. But the studios declined, contending that the Torrey Pines drew the same audience as Syufy’s western theaters and would have to compete with the chain-operated theaters for the right to show movies.
“The Torrey Pines was just located too close to the others as far as the distributors were concerned,” Tobolowsky said. “For him to be successful, he would have had to have a steady stream of first-run movies. If you play first-run one week and not the next week, people don’t really understand what you’re playing. Moviegoing is, to some extent, a matter of habit.”
In Las Vegas, that moviegoing habit is, by and large, restricted to mainstream big-studio releases. The Torrey Pines, on occasion, gave moviegoers a chance to see “Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams” and catch the Oscar-winning Italian comedy-drama “Cinema Paradiso” after its brief run at Syufy’s Parkway. Finding a home for such specialized movies in Las Vegas remains a problem, said Tom Ortenberg, western division manager for Hemdale Pictures.
“I think Las Vegas is a great film town-it turns out great grosses and it has some great theaters,” he said. “For commercial fare, the Las Vegas moviegoing public is served royally. But for movies that need a little TLC …”
Here is an article in the San Diego Union dated 2/28/87:
The 940-seat Cinerama theater, showcase for Hollywood blockblusters for 25 years, will be demolished and replaced by a six- miniscreen complex, Pacific Theatres announced yesterday. The new theaters will be part of a $20 million, 230,000-square- foot redevelopment of the 1950s Belleview shopping center at 59th Street and University Avenue, south of San Diego State University, said Douglas Allred, the Belleview owner who is leasing the theater site to Pacific.
Only three weeks ago, Mann Theatres announced that it plans to close the 985-seat Loma theater in the Midway area so the property owner can redevelop the site into shops and restaurants. Pacific officials in Los Angeles could not be reached for comment, but the theater’s local managers said the Cinerama has been consistently successful with blockbusters such as “Amadeus,” the currently running “Platoon,” three of the four “Star Trek” films and “The Empire Strikes Back,” the second “Star Wars” movie that sold out every performance for six months in 1979 and 1980.
“It’s a shame to lose a big theater,” Allred said, “but we’re going to make a whole new property that we hope everybody will be proud of.” He said he still needs city approval of a development permit and signed leases from anchor tenants, including a supermarket and home improvement store. He hopes to begin construction by the end of the year.
The loss of the Cinerama and the Loma will leave only three large single-screen theaters locally: Cinema Grossmont at Grossmont Center in La Mesa, also owned by Pacific; and Cinema 21 and Valley Circle, both in Mission Valley and both owned by Mann.
Developed by the New England-based Lockwood and Gordon theater chain, the $500,000 Cinerama opened in November 1962 as San Diego’s first theater designed to show movies filmed in the “Cinerama” split- screen process. Early examples were “How the West Was Won” and “The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm.” It also was the first cinema built in a San Diego shopping center.
Three years later, Pacific acquired the theater along with the 986-seat, Cinerama-equipped Center theater in Mission Valley, which was converted to a triplex in 1971. “I hate to see the place go,” said Richard Koldoff, the semi- retired projectionist who operated the Cinerama cameras from 1962 to 1970, when they were removed.
Andy Friedenberg, director of the Cinema Society of San Diego, said, “Theater owners should be aware that their strength lies in their present big theaters with big sound that can’t be duplicated on a television screen. When I hear news like this, I think it’s going the wrong way.”
The theater building was still standing in 1980, according to this aerial photo. If you look at the building in the center that has the site’s name overlaying it, the theater would be the building directly south. http://tinyurl.com/yjsamms
Cinematour has this theater listed as demolished, but the church shows up in the town listings. The Googlemobile has not made it to Galesburg yet, unfortunately.
Here is part of a July 1999 article from the Milwaukee Journal:
When Ward Engelke left his job as a pastor dealing with troubled teens in Milwaukee and moved to northern Wisconsin to take a factory job, he thought he had put his preaching days behind him.
He also believed he had escaped many of the problems that he had witnessed on Milwaukee’s south side, where he helped bring spiritual guidance to gang members and others.
Engelke was wrong on both counts. He now is the pastor of a fledgling church in this Taylor County village of 412 people that is holding services in a renovated 53-year-old movie theater that he and his wife, Trish, purchased for $15,000. The movie house, opened in 1946, was closed in 1984 when a fire damaged the lobby.
Good question.
This is from the Las Vegas Review-Journal on 3/13/91:
Triumph and loss. Conflict and conciliation. Suspense and intrigue. They’re the dramatic elements you’d find in a good movie. But you can find the same elements off-screen -playing now at a theater near you. Las Vegas' volatile movie theater scene has undergone some upheavals in recent weeks-some large, some small.
Late last month, a two-screen independent theater, the Torrey Pines Cinema, closed after less than a year of trying to compete with local first-run theaters operated by well-established circuits. By next week, the three-screen Mountain View Cinema- which shut its doors late last year-will reopen as a locally operated discount house.
What could be the most significant change of all, however, showed up at the Las Vegas Drive-in: the suspense thriller “The Silence of the Lambs,” which has been the nation’s top box-office attraction for four weeks running. The presence of a box-office hit at Las Vegas' only remaining drive-in theater might not seem at all unusual. But “Silence of the Lambs” is an Orion Pictures release. San Francisco-based Syufy Enterprises operates the Las Vegas Drive-in. And “Silence” is the first Orion release to play a Syufy theater in Las Vegas in more than five years.
Orion and Syufy officials became tangled in a protracted contract dispute after Syufy balked at playing Francis Ford Coppola’s 1984 drama “The Cotton Club.” In turn, Orion refused to license its pictures to Syufy theaters. In Las Vegas, that meant Orion releases played at theaters operated by rival United Artists, which bought the locally owned Roberts chain in August 1987. Until now.
While “Silence of the Lambs” continues to play at UA’s Paradise 6 and the UA-affiliated Gold Coast Twin, its presence at the drive-in signals a peace treaty in the longtime Orion-Syufy war. “I guess there comes a time when whatever it is that makes people not do business together goes by the wayside, and you do business,” said Syufy general manager Jack Myhill in a telephone interview from the company’s California headquarters. “It’s possible we’ll play some of their pictures in Las Vegas. We’re hopeful our relationship is going to be rebuilt.”
That could happen as soon as next month, when Orion is scheduled to release “F/X 2,” but may be unable to book it at the Gold Coast if “Silence” and Kevin Costner’s Oscar favorite “Dances With Wolves” continue their strong runs. “These things happen-wars don’t last forever,” said UA’s Charles Boeckman, who formerly booked the chain’s Las Vegas theaters. “Other companies have been out with other exhibitors for a long time and they come back.”
Clouding the picture further is the fact that UA’s three Las Vegas theaters are up for sale. Only the Paradise 6 shows first-run movies on a consistent basis; the Sunrise 7 and Cinema 8 are both discount houses. (UA also books the Gold Coast Hotel-Casino’s two-screen theater, which shows first-run features.) But the Syufy-Orion truce “isn’t even a criterion” in the decision to put the theaters on the market, said Robert Vallone, general manager for UA’s Western theaters. UA’s top management has “decided that a lot of states don’t fit into their core,” Vallone said. “For years, we were basically a coastal company- California, Florida, all the Eastern Seaboard.” Selling the Las Vegas theaters is part of a “back to basics” move, he commented.
Boeckman said that speculation surrounding a Syufy-Orion truce had been circulating for “over a year.” But Orion’s box-office success with its two recent hits “might have speeded things up, who knows.” The hit status of Orion’s “Dances With Wolves” and “Silence of the Lambs” at the Gold Coast also affected the Torrey Pines Cinemas, which picked up two other first-run Orion releases, Woody Allen’s Oscar-nominated “Alice” and the science fiction action thriller “Eve of Destruction,” before it closed Feb. 28.
The Torrey Pines filed for reorganization Feb. 8 under Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Act and remained open while showing “Alice” and “Eve of Destruction.” According to court documents, Torrey Pines operator Ted Pantazis owes more than $200,000-including, his landlord alleges, almost $69,000 in rent for the theater, located in the West Sahara Town Center at Sahara Avenue and Torrey Pines Drive.
On Feb. 25, however, the Torrey Pines filed a motion to dismiss the bankruptcy case, stating Pantazis wanted to file an anti-trust case against various movie distributors and could not do so unless the bankruptcy filing was dismissed. According to the motion filed by Pantazis attorney Eleissa C. Lavelle, the Torrey Pines had doubled the gross revenues of previous months with its first-run showing of “Alice.”
“The greatest impediment to the success of the (Torrey Pines) … has been the inability … to obtain quality first-run films from film distributors, which (Pantazis) believes "may be the result of illegal agreements with (Pantazis') only competition in this market,” Lavelle’s motion states.
The “only competition” referred to is Syufy, which owns and operates 32 screens at the Cinedome 6, Redrock 11, Century 12 and three-screen Parkway walk-in theaters, as well as the four-screen Las Vegas Drive-in. Syufy has been the target of numerous lawsuits, including a 1986 Justice Department suit alleging the chain has conspired to monopolize the Las Vegas movie market by buying out its competitors, which previously operated the Redrock, Parkway, Fox Charleston and Cine Boulevard theaters. (The Fox Charleston was demolished and the Cine Boulevard closed in 1989, after six unsuccessful months as a discount theater.)
Booking the critically acclaimed “Alice” in January signaled a breakthrough for the Torrey Pines, according to the theater’s bankruptcy affidavit, “and it was anticipated following that breakthrough, that additional quality, first-run films would be forthcoming.” But the bankruptcy petition, filed to give the Torrey Pines “sufficient time to reorganize its debts, in anticipation of its receipt of the first-run movies over the next several months” instead “has had an unexpected, unforeseeable adverse effect, in that the film distributors have now completely refused to allocate any additional films” to the Torrey Pines, the motion alleges.
Lavelle declined to comment on the motion because it is scheduled to be heard March 26 in Bankruptcy Court. Some industry observers, however, attributed the Torrey Pines Cinemas' problem to its small size, location and lack of a track record in drawing audiences.
One of the theater’s first attractions was a first-run showing of “Gremlins 2: The New Batch,” which “performed poorly” at the Torrey Pines, said a distribution official for Warner Bros., which released the movie, who asked not to be quoted by name. The movie “did much better” across town at the Syufy-operated Century Desert 12, he said. Even box-office returns on “Alice,” which court documents stated had doubled the theater’s grosses, were “awful,” said Boeckman. “I don’t have the Vegas (box-office) charts, but I know the gross was low. I compared it to the last Woody Allen picture, which I think was `Crimes and Misdemeanors,‘ which I think did 10 times better” at the Gold Coast.
The Torrey Pines may have had a promising Spring Valley location, “but it’s very difficult today to operate a theater with two or three screens,” said Syufy’s Myhill. The Torrey Pines “should never have been built,” said Don Lesh, former operator of the Huntridge Theater who will be running the Mountain View Cinema when it reopens as a bargain house. “It’s a very nice theater, but what do you do with the damn thing?” Its two screens provided inadequate competition for Syufy’s six-screen Cinedome and 11-screen Redrock in western Las Vegas, he said.
The Justice Department’s 1986 suit was one of the few antitrust cases pursued during the Reagan Administration, but it lost the case in February 1989, when U.S. District Judge William Orrick of San Francisco ruled in Syufy’s favor with a ground-breaking opinion that cited recent entertainment breakthroughs including home video and cable television. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Orrick’s decision in May 1990. The Solicitor General declined to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Last month in a related case, U.S. District Judge Irving Hill granted Syufy a summary judgment, dismissing monopoly charges in a lawsuit the Roberts Co. filed in 1984, when the group operated the Mountain View and Huntridge theaters. (Roberts subsequently built the Paradise and Sunrise and acquired the Cinema 8 from another theater operator before selling out to UA.) Syufy’s legal victories may signal a tough road ahead for the Torrey Pines, said one observer who asked not to be quoted by name. “So the guy’s going to sue,” he said. “If the Justice Department can’t beat Syufy, then how can he?”
The Syufy case “established some very good law from their point of view,” said Dallas attorney Edwin Tobolowsky, whom Pantazis consulted regarding possible legal action. Tobolowsky has “represented a lot of motion picture exhibitors, independent theater operators who have had difficulty in obtaining first-run pictures,” he said during a telephone interview from Dallas.
On behalf of the Torrey Pines, Tobolowsky “wrote letters to all the major studios asking for the right to license movies free of any bids,” Tobolowsky said. But the studios declined, contending that the Torrey Pines drew the same audience as Syufy’s western theaters and would have to compete with the chain-operated theaters for the right to show movies.
“The Torrey Pines was just located too close to the others as far as the distributors were concerned,” Tobolowsky said. “For him to be successful, he would have had to have a steady stream of first-run movies. If you play first-run one week and not the next week, people don’t really understand what you’re playing. Moviegoing is, to some extent, a matter of habit.”
In Las Vegas, that moviegoing habit is, by and large, restricted to mainstream big-studio releases. The Torrey Pines, on occasion, gave moviegoers a chance to see “Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams” and catch the Oscar-winning Italian comedy-drama “Cinema Paradiso” after its brief run at Syufy’s Parkway. Finding a home for such specialized movies in Las Vegas remains a problem, said Tom Ortenberg, western division manager for Hemdale Pictures.
“I think Las Vegas is a great film town-it turns out great grosses and it has some great theaters,” he said. “For commercial fare, the Las Vegas moviegoing public is served royally. But for movies that need a little TLC …”
Here is an article in the San Diego Union dated 2/28/87:
The 940-seat Cinerama theater, showcase for Hollywood blockblusters for 25 years, will be demolished and replaced by a six- miniscreen complex, Pacific Theatres announced yesterday. The new theaters will be part of a $20 million, 230,000-square- foot redevelopment of the 1950s Belleview shopping center at 59th Street and University Avenue, south of San Diego State University, said Douglas Allred, the Belleview owner who is leasing the theater site to Pacific.
Only three weeks ago, Mann Theatres announced that it plans to close the 985-seat Loma theater in the Midway area so the property owner can redevelop the site into shops and restaurants. Pacific officials in Los Angeles could not be reached for comment, but the theater’s local managers said the Cinerama has been consistently successful with blockbusters such as “Amadeus,” the currently running “Platoon,” three of the four “Star Trek” films and “The Empire Strikes Back,” the second “Star Wars” movie that sold out every performance for six months in 1979 and 1980.
“It’s a shame to lose a big theater,” Allred said, “but we’re going to make a whole new property that we hope everybody will be proud of.” He said he still needs city approval of a development permit and signed leases from anchor tenants, including a supermarket and home improvement store. He hopes to begin construction by the end of the year.
The loss of the Cinerama and the Loma will leave only three large single-screen theaters locally: Cinema Grossmont at Grossmont Center in La Mesa, also owned by Pacific; and Cinema 21 and Valley Circle, both in Mission Valley and both owned by Mann.
Developed by the New England-based Lockwood and Gordon theater chain, the $500,000 Cinerama opened in November 1962 as San Diego’s first theater designed to show movies filmed in the “Cinerama” split- screen process. Early examples were “How the West Was Won” and “The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm.” It also was the first cinema built in a San Diego shopping center.
Three years later, Pacific acquired the theater along with the 986-seat, Cinerama-equipped Center theater in Mission Valley, which was converted to a triplex in 1971. “I hate to see the place go,” said Richard Koldoff, the semi- retired projectionist who operated the Cinerama cameras from 1962 to 1970, when they were removed.
Andy Friedenberg, director of the Cinema Society of San Diego, said, “Theater owners should be aware that their strength lies in their present big theaters with big sound that can’t be duplicated on a television screen. When I hear news like this, I think it’s going the wrong way.”
Here is a 1980 aerial view. The property was redeveloped by 1986.
http://tinyurl.com/yafaj56
Here is a 1980 aerial photo. It looks like they are using the space for retail now.
http://tinyurl.com/y8wg7gz
It’s still the same gift shop that was seen in the 2006 photo.
It appears to be a dollar store now.
Here is an interior photo from the Glazer collection:
http://tinyurl.com/y9nuoqh
Here is an undated photo from the Irvin Glazer collection:
http://tinyurl.com/yakgkkb
They also did the RKO Hillstreet and the Burbank on Main Street.
That’s because I live on the west coast now. On the east coast going away from the beach is west, so northwest
would be correct..
It looks like it was one screen in 1957:
http://tinyurl.com/yktaqft
I would say east and north.
Here is a 1983 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/r9hczd
I think the necktie photo mentioned on 8/17 is on the Clune’s Auditorium page.
Here is a view of theater as church:
http://tinyurl.com/ykcjf5q
Here is a contemporary view of the church:
http://tinyurl.com/yhfmpb7
A search of the LA Times archive finds ads for the Green Meadows in March and November 1947. Other than that, there is no mention of the theater.
The theater building was still standing in 1980, according to this aerial photo. If you look at the building in the center that has the site’s name overlaying it, the theater would be the building directly south.
http://tinyurl.com/yjsamms
Here is what the church looked like a few years ago:
http://tinyurl.com/ygtu2e6
Here is a view of the church:
http://tinyurl.com/yj6cwl7
Here is a 1980 aerial photo:
http://tinyurl.com/yf65xv8
Here is a 1980 aerial view:
http://tinyurl.com/yk4fpt4
Cinematour has this theater listed as demolished, but the church shows up in the town listings. The Googlemobile has not made it to Galesburg yet, unfortunately.
Here is part of a July 1999 article from the Milwaukee Journal:
When Ward Engelke left his job as a pastor dealing with troubled teens in Milwaukee and moved to northern Wisconsin to take a factory job, he thought he had put his preaching days behind him.
He also believed he had escaped many of the problems that he had witnessed on Milwaukee’s south side, where he helped bring spiritual guidance to gang members and others.
Engelke was wrong on both counts. He now is the pastor of a fledgling church in this Taylor County village of 412 people that is holding services in a renovated 53-year-old movie theater that he and his wife, Trish, purchased for $15,000. The movie house, opened in 1946, was closed in 1984 when a fire damaged the lobby.