The news that the historic building housing Ottawa’s Mayfair Theatre and adjacent businesses is up for sale sent supporters of the treasured independent theatre into a frenzy Wednesday, but the cinema’s owners say they’re not panicking quite yet over a looming sale.
A property listing from Coldwell Banker Sarazen Realty spurred the attention Wednesday, billing the Bank Street building at just under $3 million. The site is also home to the Opus Barber Shop and Quinn’s Ale House.
Josh Stafford, one of the ownership partners at the Mayfair, says the listing came as a surprise.
The owner of another business the Mayfair works with mentioned the pending sale off-hand to Stafford when he came in a few days ago, and pulled it up to show him the listing.
Shortly after that, a group in the Mayfair’s Old Ottawa South neighbourhood discovered the posting and “lovingly went into panic mode,” Stafford says with a laugh.
What’s prompting concern from Mayfair fans is the listing description, which bills the prime plot of land a few blocks from Lansdowne Park as a redevelopment opportunity.
It also suggests converting the theatre into other shops when its lease expires and driving up the property’s annual net income from $141,000 to more than $200,000.
Global News reached out to the listing agent on Wednesday but has not heard back.
Social media was alight on Wednesday with film fans fervently defending the Mayfair against the prospect of redevelopment.
Though they’re taking the matter seriously, Stafford says he and his partners aren’t in a panic yet, as there’s been no news of prospective buyers or an impending closing on the property.
Whoever ultimately snaps up the marquee property, there’s at least a chance they’ll be in it for the cinema, not the land underneath it.
“There’s a chance a cartoonish, horrible landlord could come in and hate independent business and want to build more condos. And that will be a fight,” Stafford says.
“But there is also a chance that some nice person could come in who wants to support small business and stranger things have happened in the last couple of years. We’ve seen what happened with the ByTowne.”
The ByTowne Cinema, Ottawa’s other independent theatre, nearly went out of business this past winter amid forced closures tied to the COVID-19 pandemic. But new owners have since stepped in with the intent of revitalizing the business, a testament to the strong film community that Stafford says wouldn’t let the Mayfair go without a fight.
“I think what helps is just seeing stuff like today, that in, I don’t know, 12 hours or so that this news has hit … people tripping over themselves saying, what can we do? Can it be a Kickstarter or can it be a petition? Can we bother the mayor? You know, it’s just nothing but that, all morning long and late last night,” he says, adding people have reached out from as far as Los Angeles, London, U.K. and Nunavut to offer their voices.
The Mayfair Theatre has another layer of protection: a heritage designation granted by the city in 2008. The protection for the Spanish Revival-style auditorium, built in 1932, means any developer looking to gut or redevelop the site would need to go through a lengthy approvals process at city hall before securing the permits they would need.
While a heritage designation is no bulletproof vest, every hurdle between the Mayfair and prospective developers gives Stafford and his partners that much more confidence.
“There’s been a few naysayers saying that, ‘OK, that doesn’t mean anything. The powers that be could still switch that.’ And I guess that’s true. But it wouldn’t be easy. It would be a lot of work for somebody coming in who wanted to get rid of us.”
The past year and a half has been a turbulent one for movie theatres of all sizes, with the Mayfair forced to shutter its projector numerous times over the course of the pandemic.
Since the theatre was allowed to reopen again under Step 3 of Ontario’s COVID-19 reopening plan, Stafford says audiences have returned in droves, consistently selling out 75-seat showings and bringing in more business than the theatre sees in a typical summer season.
Now preparing for its 90th anniversary this coming year, Stafford says the Mayfair Theatre has proven time and again that you can’t count out the cinematic staple.
“If something horrible does pop up, there’s just this sense of well, we beat the odds before and we can do it again,” he says.
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