Hope's theatre is for sale for $1 million—but district not among suitors, mayor says

The Hope Cinema is up for sale, but Mayor Victor Smith says the district isn’t planning to buy the beloved-but-unprofitable cultural institution.

In late August, Hope’s theatre was listed for sale for $990,000—a relatively good price for a theatre of any sort in the year 2024. But the price is relatively low for a reason: two different groups have tried to make the theatre work as a business without success in the small community.

The downtown Hope theatre is a beloved institution and community landmark. But nowadays, it’s no longer a place that makes money.

That has left its future up in the air. And the local municipality doesn’t appear to be the theatre’s likely saviour.

This fall, with the Fraser Valley’s mayors reaching the midway point of their respective terms, we will be talking with the region’s leaders about the state of their communities, and the challenges and successes facing their cities and towns. The series will kick off next week with an interview with Smith. Subscribe to The Current’s daily newsletter to get that interview in your inbox.

The search for a Hollywood ending

Across Canada, municipalities operate money-losing cultural facilities. They even spend tens of millions of dollars building them for the cultural benefits they bring to their communities.

For decades, the Hope Cinema has played a key role in the cultural life of the area. In addition to movies, it hosts comedy shows, rock concerts, wrestling contests, pride events, and community gatherings. But the economics of being a movie theatre has become increasingly difficult, as The Current reported last year.

Last September, the operator of the movie theatre relinquished his control over the building after trying and failing to make it work as a sustainable business.

The community’s love was there, he said.

“Whenever the citizens of Hope ever talk about the cinema, they always say ‘Our theater,’” the operator—who wanted to remain anonymous for family reasons—told The Current then. But increasingly onerous demands from the movie industry have made showing films an uneconomical business. Indeed, the most popular events were those gatherings tied to community events.

“It literally should be a charity,” the operator told the Current.

A new group of caretakers took over last fall and set about trying to find their own ways to make the business work. But now, a year later, the theatre is closing and up for sale.

Hope Mayor Victor Smith applauded the effort by the theatre’s operators.

“Those two families that ran the thing… they tried everything, did a first class job, worked their hearts out and everything. But they weren’t making money,” Smith said. “It's pretty unfortunate, because I just sent a thing out there to thanking them, because nobody tried harder. And they did try to make that place go right.”

The Current asked Smith if the district was interested in purchasing the property. He said it was not.

Smith said the district is “not into private enterprise.”

Many municipalities around British Columbia do, however, frequently own and operate cultural facilities that are run as subsidized businesses—and which might, in larger communities, be able to even turn a profit. Traditionally, though, cities and towns haven’t bought theatres that focused on movies. They haven’t needed to because, until recently, most sizable communities have been able to support an unsubsidized locally oriented theatre. Those theatres have also been geared toward screening Hollywood movies, limiting their value to the local cultural community.

But in Hope and elsewhere, that’s shifted as small independent theatres have watched the movie business make it hard and financially difficult to screen the most popular films.

In recent years, Hope’s cinema has held a huge array of events to find the audiences necessary to reach profitability. The audiences have come. But they haven’t been enough, and the theatre’s future now seems to depend on either a charity, or a government body, backing its ongoing operation.

Smith says Hope simply has too many other projects going on to spend a lot of money on a theatre. He pointed to the restoration of the Hope Station House and the construction of a spray park and outdoor pickleball courts.

Indeed, while the million-dollar price to buy the Hope Cinema is low compared to most municipal cultural amenities, $1 million is still a lot of money for a community of 7,000 people—on a per capita basis, it’s the equivalent of Abbotsford spending $23 million. Whatever operating subsidy is needed to operate the theatre would bring an additional yearly cost.

While Hope might not be coming to save the theatre, Smith paid tribute to those who had tried to make it work as a business.

“Nobody had more heart and soul not placed than those two families.”