With this month’s sale of Pittsfield’s Beacon Cinema to the Michigan-based company Phoenix Theatres, Berkshire developer Richard Stanley’s time in the county’s largest city is over. WAMC has more on the project and the city’s controversial decision to forgive millions in debt before its sale.
Stanley remembers a meeting he had with a cadre of Pittsfield leaders around the year 2000. He says around two dozen people had gathered to discuss an idea for a movie theater in the city’s then ailing downtown.
“Anywhere from Mayor Ruberto, Mike Daley, the delegation, the finance people. Everybody under the sun was there, trying to support the project," Stanley told WAMC. "And I made a statement at that time – and that could be almost, probably, 18 years ago – I said, you know, at the end of the day, if there are any problems that occur with this project, I’m sure that I’m going to be the only one there. And guess what? I was the only one there. And nobody else was there when push came to shove.”
Stanley’s time in Pittsfield went under the microscope in 2018. With his cinema on the brink of foreclosure and swamped in over $4 million in debt, the city chose to forgive over $2.5 million of its debt to secure its almost $650,000 sale to Phoenix Theatres. The decision was made at a November 2018 city council meeting, which featured praise for the developer and the impact his theater had on Pittsfield’s downtown and criticism of Stanley and the city’s original decision to invest in the cinema.
By way of disclosure, WAMC’s Berkshire Bureau is located in the Beacon Cinema building.
“It was a failure from the start. It shouldn’t have been done, but it was done," said Ward 2 Councilor Kevin Morandi. “Yes, businesses have come to downtown, yes they have, but realistically, making a $21 million investment into a building and nine years later, we see where it is, that is really troubling.”
Now, Stanley wants to set the story straight. It begins with his development in another Berkshire community in the 1990s.
“Myself and another guy, Michael Hoag, was responsible for writing a grant for the town of Great Barrington that got them the funds to build the parking lot," said Stanley. "As a result of that, I purchased a property along with my partner Joe Wasserman that was the original Bolero building. And we converted that to the Triplex Cinema.”
The Triplex, which opened in 1995, has been celebrated in the town as a key part of downtown’s revitalization. Stanley says Pittsfield came calling soon after.
“A couple years later, I was called in by the Pittsfield chamber of commerce to make a proposal for putting in a six-plex cinema in what is now called the surface parking lot adjacent – just north of the McKay Street multilevel parking,” he said.
The location ultimately shifted to a historic building on the city’s main strip – North Street.
“The whole financial arrangement was really created by MHIC – Mass Housing Investment Corporation," said the developer. "They’re a quasi-public agency which helps cities and towns leverage financing.”
He says the financing was put together to take advantage of as many tax credits as possible – federal historic tax credits, state historic tax credits, new market tax credits, and more.
“The type of financing that was created by MHIC was really quite complex, and certainly I don’t believe anybody on the city council truly understands how it came together,” Stanley told WAMC.
As far as the money the city invested in the project, Stanley says it was originally intended to be a grant, not a loan.
“It would have had much less of an effect on the available funds from the new market tax credits, and that’s why we elected at that time to do it as a loan," the developer said. "And the loan wasn’t even due for 40 years, so clearly, this was not a regular loan.”
From his perspective, the Beacon – while not quite the engine for renewal the Triplex proved to be – was a success. Since its opening in 2008, Stanley points to foot traffic and a bustling nightlife on North Street as some of the fruits of the Beacon project. But after the public criticism before the city council, the episode has left a sour taste in his mouth.
“This was not a project that I came to the city of Pittsfield, the chamber of commerce of Pittsfield. It was a joint public and private partnership," said Stanley. "But at the end of the day, it was only me.”
