MARIEMONT, Ohio — His dad always told him this was a dead-end job. And when the Mariemont Theatre abruptly closed in February, it seemed like he was right.
“I’ve had the best of times here,” said Jack Hoffpauir, the theater’s director of operations. “And I’ve had the worst of times.”
Hoffpauir’s first job was taking temperatures during the COVID-19 pandemic. And when he shows me around on a July morning, you can hear the sound of drills.
There are big things happening inside.
WATCH: Meet the people trying to save the Mariemont Theatre
In January, after years of financial struggle, the property owner evicted the previous theater operator. In February, the theater closed and WCPO 9 crews saw people carrying popcorn makers, projectors and movie posters to a moving truck.
Residents worried it would never open again.
“It means a lot to them, and it means a lot to us,” Hoffpauir said. “It was tough.”
Since then, a nonprofit film organization has taken over and raised almost $1 million to reopen the theater. Out front, the marquee calls it a community cinema. Below that, it says:
Join us
Hoffpauir is hopeful things will be different now because Cindependent, which hosts an independent film festival in Cincinnati every year, plans to make the Mariemont Theatre central to everything it does.
But if you thought reopening a theater would be easy, Hoffpauir will tell you you’re wrong.
“We’re trying to do something big here,” Hoffpauir said. “It’s an unbelievable, unimaginable amount of work.”
Work that goes beyond fundraising.
Hoffpauir points to old brick he says came from when the theater opened in 1938. Then, he climbs onto the roof. The week before, he helped fix an air-conditioning unit up here.
“There’s a lot of cherished memories that are shared with us," Hoffpauir said. “This place is like a second home to me."
In another auditorium, Tom Sanders is sweeping the carpet. There are blueprints sitting on a larger speaker and an open box of screws. Sanders and his team from Doan Theatre Services are installing frames for new screens and a sound system.
I ask if anyone will notice.
“It’s going to be like night and day,” Sanders said.
Sanders has been working in theaters since 1983 — or as he remembers it, the year of “Return of the Jedi.”
“I’ve known the Mariemont since I was a kid,” Sanders said. “It’s like their church.”
He takes me upstairs, where he checks old wires, making sure he didn’t cut anything he wasn’t supposed to. He calls Hoffpauir and puts him on speakerphone.
“Walk around the theater,” Sanders said.
He grabs wires and taps the ends together. A clicking sound can be heard over the phone.
That means they’re working.
“This is how I spend most of my days,” Sanders said. “Untangling wires.”
He laughs. But he knows the future of this theater is anything but a joke.
“There’s much more at stake,” Sanders said. “Getting this place back to the Mariemont community — everyone wants that.”
Hoffpauir says they plan to bring staff back in August and potentially open that month.
