Too Cozy?

By: Mr. Wilson on May 12, 2006
Joseph W. Johnson, Jr. asks if the City and Douglas Theaters are too cozy in this morning's LJS letters to the editor:
Am I the only citizen who wonders what is wrong with the picture of enduring alliances among former Mayor Don Wesely, current Mayor Coleen Seng and Douglas Theatres? Now we read that after the a Wesely/Seng-orchestrated, financially disastrous switch from private ambulance service to Lincoln Fire Department service, and after the eminent domain creation of The Grand, owned (through tax increment financing) and operated by Douglas (as is every other screen in Lincoln), Seng now supports a high-rise and civic center proposal which — how amazingly — buys Douglas Theatre’s now nearly worthless properties downtown for millions of dollars. Am I the only one who is concerned?
It's easy enough to blow aside Mr. Johnson's concerns because of how he has chosen to write his letter. For example the Fire Department slam is awfully disingenuous in this context. But the overall question that concerns Mr. Johnson, snarkiness aside, is a reasonable one. To begin, I pin The Grand more on the City and the Downtown Lincoln Association than on Douglas. Douglas just took advantage of what was presented to them. One can hardly blame them. And to be fair, the City's first plan for the block that The Grand now sits on was in fact much more grand, and much less Douglas-centric. It is also unfair to blame the Douglas 3 building sale on some sort of City/Douglas conspiracy. It's a bad building in a prime spot, a nasty combination if our goal is to revitalize Downtown. Combine that with the City's longtime goal of establishing a Downtown park, and a consultant's recommendation that the site would make a great location for such a park, and you've got the buyout we see today. It really isn't surprising or conspiratorial. That brings us to the purchase of the Star Ship 9. The SS9 situation is a little stranger, primarily because I don't understand Douglas' motivation for selling the property so easiliiy. By most indications the SS9 is reasonably popular with the public and it does a fair amount of business. Perhaps "a fair amount" just isn't good enough to keep the theater afloat in the contemporary media entertainment climate. Or perhaps Douglas wants the cash to put toward another project they have their eyes on. In any event I don't immediately sense a conflict of interest. In summary, then, I think Mr. Johnson is overreacting in the context he has presented. I think it is proper for Lincolnites to raise an eyebrow or two, but I don't see any shenanigans. I do have a problem with Douglas' de facto monopoly status, but that's a slightly different issue, and one which Mr. Johnson didn't raise.

Comments

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Neal
May 12, 2006 at 4:11PM

If you believe Douglas, and I don’t really think there’s a reason not to given second-run theatres are disappearing elsewhere, they were planning on closing the Starship anyway. Supposedly the quick release schedule of DVDs has been hurting the second-run theatre business.

alathea
May 12, 2006 at 8:18PM

Thank you for your level assesment of the situation. My wife is asst. manager at the Grand, and has managed another theater in another town. For what little she gets paid for her responsibility ( shes not a college kid, and so has some more tasks that aren’t given to them)and experience if there were shenanigans afoot shed be the first to let fly. A good business decision on their part does not a conspiracy make-the merely took advantage of the city councils largess due to lack of people’s involvment in the city council process. Don’t like whats happening, go to the meetings-its pretty simple. A monopoly technically doesn’t exist since Douglas has nothing to do with the City’s DMP and vision. They just ride the wave until things change. I believe, like any good business, they would have welcomed the competition had it been allowed.

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