By Brent Schacherer

Even while arguing during the past few years that saving the Litchfield Opera House is the right thing to do, I’ve shuddered at the possible costs of restoring the building.

Cleaning up, renovating and finding a good use for the 107-year-old building — to say nothing about finding funding for all that work — seems like a mammoth task.

But that’s why I think the offer made by the largely anonymous Greater Litchfield Opera House Board last week is so intriguing.

Darlene Kotelnicki, who spoke for the board, took a measured approach to the offer. She made no grand predictions of an Opera House immediately restored to its original grandeur. She did not announce any tenants or unrealistic intentions.

Instead, she said the most important thing to her and her group was that the Opera House be saved.

And, more importantly for those worried about the city spending taxpayers’ money on the building, she offered to take the Opera House off the city’s hands. The group doesn’t want the building as a gift or even a cut-rate price. Kotelnicki reported her group had a cashier’s check for $5,000 to present as a downpayment on a $100,000 purchase offer.

Some would like to say this offer is less than it appears. The $100,000 includes credit for about $59,000 the city would have to pay for hazardous material removal and demolition if it were to tear down the building. Those are real costs and it seems only fair to include them in a purchase offer.

But forget about that “rebate” and take only the offer of $41,000 cash. Would any of the naysayers have predicted that kind of offer for this building prior to last week?
I don’t know that I would have expected it.

I’ve said all along that the piece missing in all previous pleas for saving the Opera House was an organized group ready to take on the challenge. Prior to Kotelnicki’s appearance before the City Council, it was all just words. Now it looks like words backed by the promise of action from a group that is passionate about saving the building.

No, there do not appear to be any firm plans for just what to do with the building. But, again, the group is taking small steps first, as recommended by the Opera House Re-Use Committee, of which Kotelnicki was a member. The Re-Use Committee’s report to the City Council, an extremely well-researched piece of which all 10 committee members should be proud, suggested that the most important step in saving the Opera House was to begin.

Hazardous materials must be removed, interior walls added after the building’s original construction must be taken down, and the building must be thoroughly cleaned.

Once that cleanup is complete, the public will be able to go inside the Opera House. Opening the building for public review could go a long way in encouraging financial support from those who believe in preserving historic buildings.

That’s the beauty of this offer from the Greater Litchfield Opera House Board — those who want the building preserved can participate in that success; those who don’t will not have to.

“It should be the best of both worlds,” Kotelnicki said in an interview earlier this week. “We just want it to be a win-win for both sides. It needs to be a positive process.”

It should be a positive process. The Re-Use Committee offered several examples of other cities around Minnesota working to save historic buildings. Some of these efforts are ongoing and for pessimists may seem to be examples of preservation failures. Instead, they should be viewed as examples of preservation in progress.

A success story is the Fairmont Opera House. Similar to Litchfield’s Opera House, the Fairmont building was on the verge of demolition before a nonprofit group stepped up to save it. The building is now operated by a nonprofit Fairmont Opera House Inc. and is used for arts and entertainment events. It struggled financially for a number of years but has emerged on more sound footing and has an annual operational budget of about $250,000, according to the Re-Use Committee’s report.

Saving the Opera House won’t come easily or quickly. But with the right combination of leadership and passion, it can happen.

Brent Schacherer is editor and general manager of the Independent Review.