The Fortuna Theater, built in 1938, maintained its structural integrity after a magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck Humboldt County in December of 2022. However, the extensive damage inside the building — caused by a ruptured sprinkler system — left the theater closed with no timeline for reopening. Three and a half years later, its list of movies with hand-placed letters sits empty and thin cracks line the exterior face upon closer inspection. None of the neon letters on the marquee light up. A notice on the front door, promising the return of the theater, has been hanging for the last two years with no update.
At the Depot Museum’s 50th birthday celebration on July 2, a table was set up across the street with a table banner labeled “Fortuna Theater Foundation,” accompanied by a life-sized cutout of a flying monkey from The Wizard of Oz and QR codes to the foundation’s website. Fortuna local and nurse Linda Rasmussen, who manned the booth, says she realized no one was going to do anything about the theater any time soon and gathered a group of friends to create the nonprofit in 2024.
“You need to invest in our town, so it carries on into the future. You need a theater. You need something to do,” Rasmussen says. “Fortuna really has seriously no nightlife. I think part of that is losing the theater, so you need to invest in this community and one of the main ways to invest in this community is bringing our theater back. And that’s not a hard sell, let me tell you. The hard sell is getting the money.”
During the foundation’s tabling, several Fortuna residents approached to volunteer their expertise in different fields when the time comes to rebuild, ranging from engineering to film and theater design. They signed their names and contacts on a growing “skill list” on the table. Another woman came later with her checkbook to donate $100. Rasmussen added that a local company, Glass Authority, had repaired the ticket booth windows when they were vandalized.
“People here will open their hearts and wallets and work for us when it becomes the people’s theater,” Rasmussen said.
Funding the Fortuna Theater
The Fortuna Theater, along with the Eureka Theater and Arcata Theatre Lounge, were built while the Federal Theater Grant was active from 1935 to 1939. The grant was made as a part of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal during the Great Depression to fund arts and entertainment access, resulting in the building of many Art Deco venues in small towns across the country.
David Corkill, the owner of the Cinema West chain that Fortuna Theater is currently a part of, has listed the initial price for the theater as $1.1 million but Rasmussen says he has been communicating with the foundation about selling the theater to the nonprofit with a down payment of $200,000. So far, the foundation has raised around $5,300.
“And I still keep lobbying that owner. Come back and open it up. But he just feels it’s too small potatoes for him now,” Rasmussen says. “Somebody else needs to take that over. He is so busy. He barely gets to call me back, but he’s being responsive to us, and he gets it that we mean business, and I appreciate that.”
On March 16, the Fortuna City Council approved a Community Development Block Grant application on behalf of the foundation for up to $1 million to aid in the theater’s rebuilding. On June 1, the foundation shared an update through Facebook that the grant had been denied by the state government due to the project being considered a rehabilitation effort in addition to purchasing the building.
Rebecca Moore, vice president of the organization who also tabled at the Depot celebration, has been able to use her experience as an attorney in civil cases to help the foundation become a 501c nonprofit, apply for grants and determine the best financial route for the theater. Despite the denial of the grant, Moore and Rasmussen remain optimistic.
“I don’t think this is a bad thing, but they did require us to hire individuals from certain groups, and we had to track that,” Moore said. “Wouldn’t it be great if, once we get ownership, some volunteers came forward and helped with some of the renovations, like the tile out front needs to be redone, and things? Well, if you get a grant from the state, understandably, they want prevailing wages paid on that work. But that adds a lot of cost. So, by having the owner finance it, we have less restrictions on what we can do.”
The foundation and Corkill are still determining which theater repairs will be done by Cinema West, and when the theater will be in proper condition to open to the public and generate revenue to pay Cinema West back. Beyond the negotiations, Moore is looking forward to the theater being returned to the hands of Fortuna residents.
“It’s the people’s theater. It belongs to the people,” Moore says. “That is very exciting, especially with what we see going on with our government … people need their own [businesses], they want their community to suit their needs, rather than an outside conglomerate.”
Spotlighting the theater
Karl Klinger’s maternal side of the family has lived in Fortuna since the 1900s and he recently discovered through a vintage photo online that his great aunt worked at the Fortuna Theater in the 50s. His mother saw the Star Wars trilogy there when it first came out in theaters and Klinger himself saw a rerun of the movies in 2022, shortly before the theater closed. He spent many nights with his parents watching movies at the Main Street venue, where he developed a love of film, along with using his brother’s camera to create skits with his cousins as a kid.
While attending Cal Poly Humboldt to study film, Klinger says he was tasked with making a documentary about a local story and the empty theater he passed on regular walks became his subject. The documentary grew beyond a class assignment for Klinger, and he worked with a department advisor to improve the video and distribute it online in June. He shifted the documentary’s focus from a personal narrative to emphasize the theater’s story and the people impacted by it.
“I think I spent way more time than I should have because I wanted this to be special,” Klinger says. “I want this to be something I worked hard on.”
Using the Fortuna Theater’s limited documentation and existing research, Klinger combed through hundreds of photos and old footage. He also contacted the Depot Museum for more resources. While he made several attempts to get a hold of someone who could allow him inside access to get footage of the damage, he says he was unsuccessful and had to scan dozens of websites to find existing media.
“I want to show people the damage the most because I thought to myself, ‘If you [want to] convince somebody, some way, somebody should show them how they can help,’” Klinger says. “My theory was to show them damage, instead of saying, ‘This Fortuna Foundation thing was interesting because they said there’s damage,’ and stuff like that, and I couldn’t find any pictures of the inside.”
He published the documentary on YouTube on June 18 and reached out to several local media outlets for wider distribution. He also began brainstorming solutions and fundraising ideas for the theater but says he believes community involvement is equally as important as donations.
“As a local community, being there and showing up is a very big thing,” Klinger says. “There’s events in front of the theater, or events for there, we need to be there as a community of people because it is a good thing for local communities to come together in ways to just be there.”
Rasmussen says she’s seen the documentary and is hoping to post it on the foundation’s Facebook page. She describes how Klinger captured her passion for the theater well and feels like her story was listened to. She believes that Fortuna’s image and liveliness is heavily tied to the theater — and the marquee being lit up again should be high on the priority list.
“Beyond the movies, we have one little Main Street. That’s where Eureka and Arcata are different. That’s all we got. And everything about that Main Street is that theater marquee. So, I feel strongly that Fortuna really wants to reinvent itself and spruce up. Yes, you may, then you need to fix that marquee.”
The Fortuna Theater Foundation will continue to table at local events and is looking to launch a Kickstarter campaign. Community members can donate through its website and follow updates on the theater through the Save Fortuna Theatre Group Facebook page.
Editor’s note: This story was first published in the July 7 edition of The Ferndale Enterprise.
Griffin Mancuso is a freelance journalist based in Eureka. More of his work can be found at griffinmancuso.wordpress.com.
This article appears in Humbuggery in Humboldt, Part 2.