Parkway owner ends 29 years in business

Standing in the red carpet lobby of the Parkway Theatre, owner Bill Irvine speaks genially with a woman who comes in just to buy popcorn. Like the longtime neighbor she is, the woman asks, concerned, if the rumors are true. Yes, Irvine, says, he is closing up shop after 29 years.

The Parkway, at 4814 Chicago Avenue S., has been one of south Minneapolis’ landmarks since it was built in 1931, and is one of the only single-screen theaters left in the Twin Cities. The theater, which has featured thousands of independent, cult and foreign films over the decades, is listed on the Cinema Treasures website, (www.cinematreasures.com), devoted to preserving classic theaters across the country.

Irvine had managed the Parkway for three years in the mid-1970s when the previous owner retired. Irvine tried to buy the theater, but the then-owner sold it to a pornography operator who lived in Omaha, Nebraska.

Fortunately, the porn operator ran into problems when the neighborhood turned out to picket his establishment, even pretending to take photos of people walking in, Irvine said. The porn operator tried to sue to keep neighbors from harassing his customers, and while the battle dragged on both in court and outside the theater, the Irvines made an offer.

“The day he accepted, and we got the purchase agreement in our hands, he won the court battle,” Irvine said. “Picketers would now have to stay away from his entrance, and his business shot through the roof. He tried to give us $10,000 to forget about it, but we wouldn’t.”

Irvine grew up in south Minneapolis, and said he is old friends with neighbors he sees every day. At the same time, he said, “29 years takes its toll on you.”
“It’s a real challenge to run a place like this. For the big corporate theaters, everything just falls into place. They have no booking, they don’t have to fight for stuff, they just get it.”

He said, with a touch of bitterness, that the theater’s closing comes at the end of a long struggle with the City of Minneapolis.

“In the last year, the city has raised my property taxes 160 percent,” said Irvine, who co-owns the theater with his ex-wife. “They mainly care about downtown, but the cost of fixing up downtown has to come from somewhere, and it ends up on the backs of homeowners and neighborhood businesses. There are many things that add to the quality of the city – the local bar, the hardware store, the barber shop and local theater – that we need to help preserve.”

At the same time, he said, independent and foreign film houses across the country are struggling.

“It’s a nationwide problem,” he said. “Young people of college age aren’t coming to see art or foreign films like they used to. People are being raised their whole lives on nothing but Hollywood blockbusters, and that’s sad.”