Now that the church has moved out of Fresno’s Tower Theatre, neighborhood can move on

Bring down the curtains. Fresno’s most unfortunate, longest-running theater drama is finally over.

Escrow on the city’s $6.5 million purchase of the Tower Theatre closed July 22. However, it took till Monday to feel a true sense of closure.

What finally did the trick? Seeing video (taken by The Bee’s Eric Paul Zamora) of a group of Adventure Church members moving the church’s belongings out of the historic art deco theater and loading them onto a rental truck.

I recognized a few of the husky young men from my own sporadic visits to the Tower District during the 18 months of weekly Sunday morning protests. They wore the same serious expressions.

Church members didn’t have much to say Monday, other than to assert the church had been locked out of the theater. Assistant City Manager Gregory Barfield swiftly denied the accusation — while also disclosing the building’s locks were changed.

Opinion

As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about the meaning of words, that one hit the semantic funny bone.

Regardless of phrasing, the conservative evangelical church that for more than a year waged a culture war in Fresno’s most liberal, LBGTQ-welcoming neighborhood has officially vacated the premises. Which feels like the final coda to this extended real-life drama.

But rather than throw dirt on Adventure Church and especially head pastor Anthony Flores (who once threatened to climb onto the Tower Theatre roof and dangle the keys to the front door above the faces of demonstrators after his church took ownership), let’s permit them to quietly exit stage left.

And instead shift the spotlight toward the individuals, many of them Tower District residents and small business owners, who refused to give an inch when faced with the hostile takeover of a neighborhood landmark.

Save the Tower group prevails

For more than a year and a half, members of the Save the Tower Theatre Demonstration Committee organized weekly protests of the proposed sale from across Wishon Avenue. These folks refused to go away or be silent, even when confronted by counter-protesters whose ranks included conservative agitators disguised as media and the occasional Proud Boys member.

“I’m out here for the duration,” founding member Laura Splotch told me in September 2021, months after having her address and place of employment doxxed online. “I’m not giving up. I’ll be here till we win. And then I’ll still be here afterward.”

If not for people like Splotch, I wonder if city officials would’ve had the stomach for this fight. Let alone the comfort to set aside millions in taxpayer dollars to snap up the entire Tower Theatre block once the sale to the church fell through.

Just goes to show that if a group of citizens believes strongly enough in something, and raises their voices loudly enough for a long enough duration, their collective outcry will not be ignored by the powers-that-be.

Has any group of Fresno demonstrators ever shown such persistence? Certainly not in my quarter-century of living here.

I don’t believe Fresno city leaders, including Mayor Jerry Dyer, wanted Adventure Church to purchase the Tower Theatre, if only because of the controversy that would surely ensue. But they couldn’t really come out and say that, for a number of reasons.

Instead, they had to wait for a complicated legal dispute to play itself out between theater owner Laurence Abbate, Adventure Church and the owners of Sequoia Brewing Co. Then strike when the time is right.

That process took longer than anyone wanted, but we’ve finally reached the final stanza. The Tower Theatre belongs to the citizens of Fresno, and the locks have been changed.