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New College collapse has theater reeling
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Alan Holt, a New College graduate who manages the Roxie Theater, says he is in negotiations to purchase the business.
The 36-year-old progressive university was shuttered after the Western Association of Schools and Colleges yanked its accreditation in February after a yearlong investigation into claims of financial and operational mismanagement. Some employees continue to fight to reopen the school.
The Roxie Theater, which was donated to New College in 2006, will celebrate 100 years of film screenings next year if new owners can turn around its financial woes.
“The bills were all being forwarded to New College, so we didn’t even know they were unpaid until the power went out or until the water was off,” said operations manager Rachel Hart, one of the 20 part-time workers paid in April for the first time in nearly six months. “We just did whatever we could to keep operating.”
More than 30 neighborhood theaters have closed in the past 30 years and roughly one dozen remain, according to San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation President Alfonso Felder. He blamed rising real estate prices and downtown multiplex theaters for the trend.
New College graduate Alan Holt, a 2007 writing and literature major with no theater industry experience, took over management of the Roxie in April with an infusion of cash from himself and his father.
Holt said he is in negotiations to purchase the theater, which he hopes to run as a nonprofit so it can raise tax-free funds from donations and membership dues.
The theater under Holt will continue to rent out its space for special events and increase the number of films that it distributes to help lift profits and retain greater revenue shares of the films that it screens, he said.
“We just want to continue to show films that you won’t see anywhere else,” Holt said. “You want something that’s commercially viable, but you also want to be able to pick up some films that aren’t.”
The Modern Times Bookstore on nearby Valencia Street also was left struggling in the wake of New College’s collapse, according to Ruth Mahane, a member of the collective that runs the leftist shop.
“They used us for their course books and things — so that’s a big chunk out of our money,” she said.
Comments from Examiner Readers
10:46 AM MST on Thu., Jun. 19, 2008 re: "New College collapse has theater reeling"
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Modern Times Bookstore & New College said:
Sad that an ostensibly "progressive" school like New College fell prey to the same problems (i.e., financial irregularities) as its mainstream counterparts. But let's face it, many of the degrees it conferred upon its graduates had no practical application in the "real" world. Instead, its courses were the kind of New Age, crunchy granola crap that is fodder for late night comics when they skewer California. Insofar as Modern Times is concerned, I was surprised by the absolutely contempt with which some of its staff (esp. Michael, who came to one of my classes at CCSF to sell books) treats customers. The folks at the Book Center, the CPUSA's sadly departed shop further down on Valencia, were much friendlier, and didn't treat folks like pariahs if they couldn't recite Marx's Capital from memory. As is far too frequently the case with lefties, the arrogance of Modern Time's staff functions to drive people from the store/movement (although Ruth, who also teaches at CCSF, is swee
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