The former artistic director of the Burr Theatre – now The Columbia – has started an online petition to save the 88-year-old building.
Owner Barry Buckland has listed the heritage site for $3.3 million, looking for either a “strategic partner” or someone to buy it whole, according to a July 22 interview with the Record.
But Ellie King wants the City of New Westminster to either buy it back fully or partially.
“In order to persuade the city to do that, we need to show them that there is a grassroots movement of people who want the Burr back,” King said of the petition, which has garnered nearly 200 signatures so far.
The theatre opened in 1927 and was later named after local actor Raymond Burr, who was known for his roles in the TV dramas Perry Mason and Ironside. In 2000, the city purchased the building for $700,000 from the New Westminster Fraternal Order of Eagles and leased it to the Raymond Burr Performing Arts Society until 2006, when it decided not to renew the lease.
City reports at that time said the building needed millions of dollars in repair work, and given the high price tag, council decided to look in the private sector for a buyer. The society also came to the table during the request-for-proposal process and put in a $1-million bid for the theatre but lost to Buckland’s $850,000 bid.
Why that happened has left King puzzled to this day, she said.
“As a business venture, it succeeded. We took it from an empty, smelly, run-down dance hall and turned it into a live theatre. The tenants, the merchants on the street were happy. We had families coming, it was vibrant, it was lively,” King explained. “People still say to me, ‘What happened to the Burr?’”
King added the Burr Theatre put on six productions each year, had more than 700 subscribers and 120,000 ticket sales, and brought $1.2 million into the local economy.
Coun. Chuck Puchmayr responded by saying the council at the time didn’t think the society could bring the theatre up to code.
“The concern certainly I had with them was their inability to raise those kinds of funds. Here was a private entrepreneur that had a track record of running a private business in the city close by,” he said of Buckland, owner of The Columbia’s Lafflines Comedy Club.
When Buckland took over, he gutted the theatre from top to bottom, spending nearly $2 million on renovations. The work, however, was almost $1 million more than he had anticipated, he told the Record in a previous interview, forcing him to put the building up for sale.
“You never know the magnitude when you get into an old building like this. … Just to drill a hole through (the floors), there were 18 inches of petrified wood just to get a plumbing pipe through, … but once we got in here and found out we had to upgrade so many things, from the electrical to the sprinkler system,” he said.
Puchmayr, meanwhile, said council doesn’t have the budget to buy it back.
“There would be a significant tax increase,” he said. “The intention is that that’s a private entity. It certainly has community advantage, it’s an important heritage resource, but council has not considered going to that extreme of purchasing the Raymond Burr.”
Puchmayr added Buckland has done an “amazing job” of restoring it and is hopeful someone will come forward to purchase it.
For King’s online petition, visit http://www.thepetitionsite.com and search for Bring Back Our Burr Theatre in the top right search engine.
