Baltimore's Senator Theatre: Then and Now

I recently helped Friends of The Senator (FOTS) compile this YouTube video, documenting The Senator's appearance before and after Baltimore City forced a change in ownership and management:



The video is a companion to the FOTS petition, encouraging the new operators to maintain the theatre's exterior neon and incandescent lighting, the landscaping, and remove accumulated graffiti. The petition was started about a month ago and has garnered over 600 signatures, mostly from the Baltimore area, but also from across the nation and around the world. Hundreds of comments left by signers often go far beyond the petition's modest request for exterior maintenance.

Occupy the Future

Word on the street is that the Occupy Baltimore protesters are going to be IMMINENTLY routed from McKeldin Square. A couple of days? A week? Maybe two? Nobody knows, but the Mayor is rumored to be getting fed up with the occupation, and I’m sure that the Occupy protesters calling attention to the man behind the curtain, M.J. Brodie at the real City Hall, down on Charles Street (BDC), did not endear them to the city’s power structure.

Other cities have already ejected their occupations. Baltimore has employed an outwardly tolerant approach, but in reality, it’s almost certainly because our local occupation has been so ineffectual and silly that the politicians are laughing at the protesters behind the scenes. If they were a threat, they would be gone by now, and their lame applause at the BDC event probably reassured Mr. Brodie that they were no such thing. Still, even acknowledging that the man behind the curtain exists is itself a threat.

Me, I gave up on the local occupation a couple of weeks ago, after they were snowed by Brodie’s bullshit and actually applauded the little monster.

Revo, who was more enthusiastic about the Occupy movement from the beginning, only gave up hope last night, after attending the G.A. and realizing that in the face of imminent disaster for the camp at McKeldin Square, they were discussing bumper stickers and their triumphant glee over their YouTube hits for a video showing them acting like noisy children during Karl Rove’s recent talk at Hopkins. At the G.A. last night, the imminent eviction from McKeldin Square was apparently never discussed.

I’ll continue going to some marches. Most of the marches are actually organized by the unions, anyway, so they’re somewhat effective. The unions know how to organize.

I’ll continue to support the national Occupy movement too, as long as it stays focused on economic demands. I would like it to get more specific about those. Some of the reforms I would like to see:

A constitutional amendment clarifying that a corporation is not a person.

A constitutional amendment clarifying that money is not speech.

I happen to believe that the founding fathers never intended for corporations to be people or for money to be speech, because they probably had a dictionary, and they probably understood what the meaning of “is” is. Some federal judges need these things spelled out, though. Next we’ll have to be telling them that war is not peace and thought is not a crime.

The above two amendments to the constitution would, if enacted and enforced, go a long way toward reforming the system. They would clarify that the rights of the people supersede the rights of corporations, and that the right of individuals to free speech supsersedes the right of corporations to drown out their speech with money that speaks louder than words.

Others in the movement have also come up with very good ideas for reform. The original Occupy Wall Street group came up with this statement of purpose, which notes some specific problems that need to be addressed. One of the working groups of the New York protest has come up with the 99% Declaration. It contains a list of suggested reforms, which the group hopes to have representatives from all over the country vote on in a national convention on July 4, 2012 in Philadelphia. I agree with the ideas expressed therein, some more than others, but I certainly agree that all of these issues deserve to be part of the national debate.

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone magazine has been investigating the corruption on Wall Street since long before the Occupy movement began. His advice to Occupy Wall Street contains a specific list of reforms to the financial industry that would “hit bankers where it hurts” and would help return our government to serving the people. I particularly like the one where a tax on all trades would make the financial industry pay for its own bailouts, and return our tax money to us.



I think between these documents listed above, there is a useful start to getting our country back.

The Occupy movement, and the local occupation in particular, have also discussed some ideas that I consider really silly. Chief among them is this “consensus democracy” model that consists of endless discussion, open balloting via wiggly fingers (snap, twinkle, pop!), and where decisions are only made when a clique of people who all agree with each other manages to shout down or intimidate all other participants. It doesn’t work among 20 people. How is it going to work nationwide?

The worst aspects to the “consensus democracy” model being used in the Occupy movement are the lack of secret ballots, which means that individuals are easily intimidated by self-appointed leaders into going along with whatever the mob decrees, and also the fact that, since decisions effectively only seem to happen when some individual or group manages to dominate everyone else, there is real danger, if this ever became the national model, of it leading to dictatorship and authoritarian rule, complete with slaughter of dissidents.

The local occupation has already been shouting down anyone they don’t agree with. In their Google group, when Revo started speaking up, they couldn’t handle even one dissident. How would they tolerate real democracy, if they ever got into power? The answer is, they wouldn’t.

Give me the U.S. Constitution any day, folks. Its three branch system with its checks and balances and its bill of rights have been emulated the world over. That’s because, until the system gets badly corrupted, as it is now, it works about as well as you can expect a system that governs millions of people to work.

Occupy the Constitution. Occupy Wall Street. Occupy our Government. Occupy the Future.



Previous posts in my series on Occupy Baltimore:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Unions to the Rescue, at Least Temporarily

In previous parts of my series on Occupy Baltimore, I mentioned the open Occupy Baltimore Google Group. Anyone with an email can sign up, but the majority of the posts on there are by the group I’ve been calling the Callow Clique (who are not down at McKeldin Square most of the time, except for during the nightly G.A., but are posting on the Google group). If you want to see some real dysfunction, sign up and check it out.

Continuing my series, where I’m still struggling to catch up to the present day at Occupy Baltimore, we go back to late October...

Participation was dwindling. The city was making noises about evicting the occupation from the square, and had given the protesters a deadline to agree to a stringent set of rules for use of the space. Just as the wolves of FAIL seemed certain to overcome OB, a group of union leaders, under the banner of the AFL-CIO, came to the rescue.

The October 26th AFL-CIO letter to the Mayor was just in time, urging the City to let the protesters remain in the square. In their letter, the union leaders wisely reframed the OB protest, casting it as being in alignment with the economic concerns of the national Occupy movement, instead of the tangential concerns it had actually focused on to that date.

“The Occupy Baltimore protests have given expression to a widely shared belief that our economy and our politics are controlled by corporate interests to the detriment of the overwhelming majority of working people...”

Well, no, up to that point in time, Occupy Baltimore had conspicuously failed to articulate any such thing, but the national movement had, and the Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York had succeeded in releasing this impressive statement of purpose. The local union leaders were wise to assume the local occupation was in solidarity with the national movement, in spite of the local failure to coalesce into anything useful.

A big thank you to the Unions for saving the local occupation’s collective butt, at least temporarily.

After the union letter, the local occupation did gain a measure of focus on local and national economic issues. (Whether or not this was due to private pressure from union leaders, I can only speculate.) In any case, the focus shifted quickly to living wage jobs, demands for economic development that benefits the local population, the city’s suit against Wells Fargo for predatory lending practices targeted at minorities, and direct action protests at the banks and the Baltimore Development Corporation.

I’m pleased to say that the committee that was working on a protest against the Baltimore Development Corporation did, after much delay, come up with an open letter to the BDC that’s more or less on point. While it’s true that they dismissed voices of experience that would have advised them to take a more demanding stance, instead opting to naively assume the BDC can be negotiated with, it wasn’t bad for a first round that would seem reasonable to the general public. If they would succeed in avoiding being placated by insincere promises of change and diplomatic liars telling them what they want to hear, they could then move on later to a more realistic assessment of the tyranny and corruption they’re actually dealing with.

But then, at the actual meeting with the BDC on November 7th, Brodie smoothly delivered a bunch of smiling diplomatic PC bullshit, and the majority of the protesters ended up giving him enthusiastic applause. Some revolutionaries!

The signs wielded by some protesters, which called the BDC “Baltimore’s Dysfunctional Cabal” and “Baltimore Demolition Corporation,” were the most confrontational part of the protest, but they were designed by Revo and me.



Brodie acted all nicey nice, promised future meetings that probably won’t materialize, and then in all likelihood got on the phone immediately after the meeting and told the Mayor to get rid of these people.

Getting rid of these people is now rumored to be in the works, according to some credible scuttlebutt we heard shortly after the BDC meeting. But instead of resorting to force, Baltimore City is apparently relying on the coming cold weather and the attrition that the protesters themselves have engendered.

The day after the BDC meeting, the Baltimore Quaker Peace and Justice Comittee, a committee of Stony Run Friends Meeting, Homewood Friends Meeting, and Old Town Friends Fellowship, also lent their support to Occupy Baltimore with an official statement of support. Much like the union leaders, the Friends nicely articulated an economic focus that OB itself had largely failed to articulate, with a pithy quote from William Penn, followed by their own short statement.

"That the sweat and tedious labor of the farmer, early and late, cold and hot, wet and dry, should be converted into the pleasure of a small number of men --- that continued severity should be laid on 19 parts of the land to feed the inordinate lusts and delicate appetites of the 20th, is so far from the will of the great Governor of the world, [it] is wretched and blasphemous."
William Penn, 1669

“The Baltimore Quaker Peace and Justice Committee supports the nonviolent protests against economic injustice that have spread from Wall Street to hundreds of locations across the country. The Occupy protestors’ commitment to nonviolence, inclusion, and consensus decision-making are our Quaker principles in action. We will support Occupy Baltimore by gathering donations and in witness to their efforts to draw attention to the injustices in our society which perpetuate excessive disparities in income and political influence.”

To date, however, the Callow Clique continues to dominate OB, continues mostly to divert its focus from economic issues, and continues to shout down anyone they disagree with, especially if that person is over 40. (Revo was told “This isn’t your revolution, grandpa. Take your walker and go home.”)

At the meeting on the steps of the BDC, Revo and I witnessed as one of the main “stars” of the Callow Clique accosted an older man (who happened to be one of a very few African Americans at the protest), accusing him of being a provocateur. After the meeting, Revo and I spoke with the man who had been accosted. He turned out to be Mitchell Ferguson, a playwright, actor, and acting coach who’s a co-founder of Nommo Theatre, who told us that this young group of activists from Red Emma’s doesn’t even realize that he himself has been invited, as a guest of Red Emma’s in the past, to give presentations there.

According to messages on the Google group, a person described as “Iranian Human Rights Activist” Saeed Salehinia recently showed up at a reading group meeting, started to articulate a point of view that was critical of anarchists, and was also shouted down by the same person that we witnessed shouting down Mitchell Ferguson. Although some in the group want to invite Salehinia to speak at a G.A., there is concern among the Callow Clique that he does not represent their point of view and will therefore be “divisive.”

That same person who did the shouting down in both of those cases, a revered figure in the Callow Clique, had, after an early confrontation with Revo over the music issue, walked up to Revo and shouted, in a voice that was meant to be menacing, "I know your legal history." (Revo's "legal history" consists of a false accusation, made for political purposes, that did not result in a conviction.)

Based on this person's initiative, the clique has also discussed researching the legal histories of anyone who wants to sleep in the communal tents, in spite of the real concerns, expressed by others in the group, that the legal system is inequitable, and statistics showing that the national rate of incarceration for African Americans is seven times the incarceration rate for whites. (Statistic: Open Society Institute)

Last night, a group from OB, led by the Callow Clique, went to a public talk by Karl Rove at Johns Hopkins University, and instead of attempting to engage in constructive critical dialogue, shouted him down and disrupted the event. While I agree that Karl Rove is a jerk, the vast majority of the audience had come to hear what he had to say, as an influential figure in American politics. The shout-down was simply counterproductive.

Occupy Baltimore does not employ a consensus democracy model at all. They employ mob rule, shouting down anyone the clique disagrees with. As I described it in an email to one member of the clique,

“One problem I see with OB's ‘consensus’ model is that the initial group that formed OB seems to have come from a revolutionary, fairly radical motivation, and therefore when individuals who might have more modest goals come in and try to influence the ‘consensus,’ since the ‘consensus’ is already coming from a more radical place, those individuals tend to be shouted down. They then leave, and the local movement does not grow, because people who are more mainstream in their orientation are being turned off - one by one, before any potential ‘consensus’ of these more mainstream views can ever grow.”

Occupy Baltimore's nightly General Assembly has turned into the OB kids table, with most adult protesters refusing to participate.

Time for Occupy Baltimore for grownups?

Previous posts in the series:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Not Suitable For Children

Today I take a break from my series on Occupy Baltimore, which will continue soon.

Last night, at a Baltimore Blast game, which I attended with my family, I ran into one of the major culprits in the City's fiasco with The Senator Theatre. You know who you are. I didn't say what I wanted to say, because I would have had to say it in front of both of our families, and it's hard to say without a lot of profanity. So let me get that out of the way right now: FUCK FUCK FUCKITY FUCK, MUTHAFUKKA!

First of all, you accomplished nothing. The Senator looks like crap now, and the City has already spent way more money on it than they ever spent during Tom Kiefaber's award-winning stewardship. It's now being run by people who don't have any passion for it, don't have much real experience running classy theatres, have a crappy plan for expansion that will ruin the building, and already aren't maintaining it properly. Way to go, idiot.

Second, you ruined a good man's life and reputation. Let me say it again. YOU ruined a good man's life and reputation. It had nothing to do with money, as evidenced by the fact that the City is now spending more money than ever on The Senator. But you lied about that to the press, and you know it. It had to do with the fact that Tom had spoken out against the actions of the BDC. Political favoritism and retribution, paid for by taxpayer dollars. Way to go, idiot.

NEWS FLASH, dude, in case you actually believed any of the rumors that were spread in order to smear: there was no cash being socked away somewhere, no vacation home in the Caribbean, no drug habit. Not a dime lent by the city. Not a dime wasted. Just a beautiful historic single-screen theater slowly going the way that just about every other historic single-screen theater in the country has gone: to the dustbin of history.

And a heroic, civic-minded man who spent well over one million dollars of his own money and operated that theater in an award-winning manner that made The Senator nationally lauded, just trying to ensure the theater would remain open long enough for others to realize its value, let him know that he was not alone in appreciating it, and come to the rescue. The Senator only still exists because of Tom Kiefaber, and he kept it going for about 20 years beyond the time when it probably would have otherwise failed. He did this to the great benefit of Baltimore City, but the cavalry never came. The wolves did.

Maybe when you're nearly 60 years old, someone will take your whole life away, and you'll have to rebuild from scratch. At 60. Maybe then you'll know how it feels.

You were not alone in this. You were joined by other present and past BDC officials, a city councilman, and a head of a local foundation.

Some of these people who were involved in the City's Senator Theatre fiasco are the same people who have been major players in the City's EBDI (East Baltimore Development Inc.) fiasco, where they forced relocation of 584 families, and then the project wasn't funded properly and the neighborhoods that have been razed are just a big empty space now.

FIVE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-FOUR FAMILIES. Most of them poor and black. Their neighborhoods destroyed, and many lives ruined. No matter what you gave them in relocation costs, you can't give them what they had back. YOU DESTROYED LIVES.

This is obviously a much much bigger heartbreaking fiasco than The Senator one, but I haven't been directly involved. I don't know any of the victims. That's why my first thought was to cuss you out for The Senator deal, but this EBDI thing is even worse, by all the reports I've heard.

I know of other cases of the City's biggest official egos ruining people's lives for goals they thought would be good ideas. Some of the victims don't want me talking about what I know, so I won't.

All I can say is, YOU SUCK. Try to develop some humanity, and some compassion. I guess you don't even know what that is. Whatever the City's goals are, if it involves ruining innocent lives in the process, it probably isn't worth it. Your career and your movement up in the local pecking order isn't worth it, either.

Truth in Reporting

Since the new operators chosen by the Baltimore Development Corporation (BDC) reopened The Senator Theatre in mid-October 2010, I notice there has not been one photo in the local news media of The Senator at night, unless it was a photo that was taken while former owner Tom Kiefaber owned or was still managing the theatre. Not one recent one taken in the past 3 months. Why is that?

Here's why...


Above: The Senator under Tom Kiefaber's ownership, March 2009

It continued to look pretty much like the above photo until after Baltimore City evicted Tom Kiefaber and the Friends of The Senator volunteers from the building in July, 2010. I can also show you numerous photos of it looking this good anytime during Kiefaber's ownership.


Above: The Senator under new management, December 2010, just 2 months after the new operators took over.

Go there and look. The new management has been neglecting the outside lights and the marquee, and there's graffitti all over the side of the building along Rosebank Avenue. This situation has been worsening for 3 months now.

To all the Baltimoreans who keep being angry at me for continuing to tell the truth about what's been happening with The Senator, please accept my apology. This card expresses my sentiments perfectly.

So, I challenge the local media once again. If you're going to report about the new operation of The Senator, go there and take a current picture of The Senator at night, will you? Stop showing beautiful photos of The Senator under Kiefaber's ownership and pretending that it looks like that now.

BDC detonates small nuclear device at Senator Theatre, blames Kiefaber

BALTIMORE, MD
July 31, 2010

Today the Baltimore Development Corporation (BDC) announced it had unavoidably detonated a small nuclear device, destroying the historic Senator Theatre, formerly located at 5904 York Road in North Baltimore. “This is all Tom Kiefaber’s fault,” noted BDC President M.J. Brodie. “Tom was a bad businessman, and besides, we didn’t like him. He hurt our feelings over a decade ago, and we haven’t forgiven him. We couldn’t allow any part of his legacy to remain and pollute the City of Baltimore. Also, he refused to get an accumulated 71 years worth of his and his family’s personal possessions out of The Senator in one day. We had no choice but to remove it by atomic blast.”

A spokewoman for one of the local neighborhood groups commented, on condition of anonymity. “Prior to the BDC’s decisive solution today, we were very concerned that a reopened Senator Theatre might bring people into the area from outside our neighborhood. We didn’t want those people taking our parking spaces, or driving up and down our streets. That was why we had backed the plan from Buzz Cusack of the Charles Theater, which offered little danger of that. But this new plan by the BDC is even better. Nobody is going to come from outside of the neighborhood just to visit a small radioactive pit.”

But a spokeswoman for the local chapter of People for A Not Entirely Poisonous Planet disagrees. “Nuclear bombs make an area uninhabitable for like, I don’t know, 3 million years, or something,” said Sage Greentree. “I might have come to a movie once or twice a year, if Mr. Cusack reopened the theatre, but I totally don’t want to go visit where The Senator Theatre was now.” Greentree lives outside of the immediate neighborhood, in a treehouse in far-away exotic Charles Village.

Not to worry, says BDC spokeswoman Kim Clark. “The cleansing device we used was much, much smaller than even the tiny nuclear bomb used at Hiroshima. It will only make the Govanstowne and Belvedere Square areas uninhabitable for a few thousand years, and they were pretty much that way already, due to Tom Kiefaber’s mismanagement of The Senator.” Clark added “Nuclear devices aren’t cheap. Tom owes us a lot of money for this.”

In spite of the warnings that their neighborhood would now be uninhabitable, local residents refused to evacuate. “We’ll just go ahead and mutate,” said one. “We’re already good at that.”

BDC President Brodie said he will continue to frequent the area. “Radioactive pits are what urban renewal is all about. Besides, genetic mutation holds no mystery for me. I’m well acquainted with it.”

“Tom Kiefaber’s family owned and operated The Senator Theatre in an award-winning manner for 71 years. The Senator would not still be here without Tom’s heroic efforts over the years,” screamed dangerous deranged psychopath and Friends of The Senator Managing Director Laura Perkins in barely intelligible expletives, before she was dragged away in handcuffs for approaching within a mile of the shiny new radioactive pit.

“The Senator Theatre is not still here,” noted Brodie, “and that’s Tom’s fault.”

Master criminal Kiefaber was unavailable for comment, but a neighbor in Baltimore County said he was busy digging a fallout shelter at his home.

Get A Clue (#3)

In the intrepid spirit of investigation, here is today's clue:

Clue #3: A tip I received claims that Robert "Bob" Embry wasn't alone at the recent pivotal meeting with Towson University President Robert Caret, which seems to have rapidly triggered TU's withdrawal of their superior Senator Theatre RFP. M.J. Brodie, the controversial President of the Baltimore Development Corporation (BDC) was also reportedly present.

So, Baltimore's own mysterious "Dr. Evil" who pulls on the levers of power and control from Abell's penthouse lair in the sky, apparently hoisted a tiny pinky to his lips and took along his "BDC Mini Me" to the recent closed-door meeting with Towson President Caret. Hmmm.

It appears that Abell and the BDC intend to maintain their control over The Senator, which took over a decade to accomplish, as well as decide for themselves the outcome of Baltimore City taxpayers' ONE MEELLION DOLLAR investment. Things are headed that way now that TU has abruptly withdrawn its Senator RFP and departed the field. I hear, though, that angry business owners in the Belvedere Square commercial district are finally catching on to the big fix ahead. Stay tuned...

A Welcome Resignation

I learned last night that Deputy Mayor Andrew Frank has "resigned." If you read to the bottom of today's Baltimore Sun story on his resignation, it sounds like a possible forced resignation, but that's speculation on my part.

Quote from the Sun article:

Privately, many city officials had speculated that Frank was considered too close to Dixon, whose legal troubles stemmed, in part, from her relationships with developers.

Rawlings-Blake has publicly declared that the Baltimore Development Corp. should be more open and transparent. She made several changes to Frank's staff, dismissing one assistant deputy mayor and demoting another. Kaliope Parthemos, Rawlings-Blake's former assistant chief of staff and a childhood friend, became Frank's sole assistant deputy mayor.

If this was a forced resignation, thank you, Mayor Rawlings-Blake! This is excellent news.

Why am I so jubilant about this resignation?

Andy Frank has been one of the real villains downtown in The Senator saga. After Tom Kiefaber stood up to the BDC, where Mr. Frank used to work, on the Belvedere Square redevelopment a decade ago and stood up around the same time for saving historic buildings on Baltimore's West Side in the area known as the Superblock, Andy Frank developed a real personal vendetta against Tom Kiefaber - a grudge that has apparently persisted to this day.

This personal grudge has manifested in Frank's lies to the press about Tom Kiefaber, mischaracterizing by exaggeration the city's investment in The Senator. Frank's lies were reported by local media as fact, which has resulted in widespread popular confusion about the situation with The Senator, and has also resulted in a violent hatred being directed against Tom Kiefaber by some members of the public who have been mislead into believing that Tom has wasted public funds.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The city's investment in The Senator, prior to acquiring it at auction last summer, has been minimal. Meanwhile, Tom, his family, and their associates, have personally invested over a million dollars of their own money into The Senator and the Belvedere Square commercial district - money that has saved The Senator up to this point, and which kept the Belvedere Square area limping along while the city neglected it for a dozen years, but that is money they will never get back. Tom is a hero who has saved an important landmark theatre for all the citizens of Baltimore, but you'd never know it from Frank's distortions to the press.

Frank has been a major contributor to the smear campaign against Kiefaber, which has resulted in the public's topsy-turvy, through the looking glass perception of the situation. It's one major reason everything much of the public believes about The Senator and Kiefaber is exactly the opposite of the truth.

As someone who has come to know Mr. Kiefaber, it's astonishing, for example, how the people who know him mostly think he's a great guy, but the people who don't really know him tend to give him dirty looks in public. OK, "great guy" is vague. What I mean by that is not just that Tom is a nice guy or a real mensch, which he is, but also one of the most brilliant minds I've met in a very long time --- extremely knowledgeable about the film industry and historic theatres, sharp, quick, conversant on a wide range of subjects, and irreverently funny too.

The fact that Tom has kept The Senator going as a first-run single-screen for-profit theatre for the past 20 years and made it nationally famous with his incredible marketing skills, when it is acknowledged as a nearly impossible task by anyone who knows anything about film exhibition, should tell you something right there. And he did this while having to fight city hall every step of the way. Ever see someone who makes something that defies the laws of physics look easy? Like the gymnasts in the Olympics who make exacting and strenuous physical exertion look like a beautiful dance? That's Tom, folks, and that's why everyone around here thinks another operator is going to be able to come in and operate The Senator as a first-run single-screen for-profit theatre and do it better than Tom. Yeah. Good luck with that. It's like me trying to win a gold medal doing a gymnastic floor routine at the Summer Olypics. Seriously.

Although, I will qualify that by saying that city hall is going to help the next guy instead of fighting him, if that RFP wins, and, subsidize him to a degree that Tom never got, so the feat won't be quite as death-defying, not for a while at least.

When I first met Tom, it was very quickly apparent to me that he was not the same guy the press talks about in a negative light. Tom's relentless hard work and high level of competence, which have been rewarded by many awards and much positive national press over the years, also directly contradict what the local public has been led to believe by people like Andy Frank.

All of this defamation of Tom had a purpose, of course. Over the course of time, it turned the public against Tom, which last summer culminated in the city's hostile takeover of The Senator, right under the nose of a public that claims to care about the theatre.

Because Tom has been unjustly sidelined by all this bad press based on the lies of Frank and a few others, his considerable expertise in the realm of historic theatres and film exhibition has also been largely ignored in the RFP process that will determine The Senator's future. This disregard for someone with so much useful information could prove to be a costly mistake that will negatively affect both the future of The Senator and the entire Belvedere Square commercial district.

Yes, I believe all of us who love The Senator have good reason to be happy that Andy Frank has resigned. It's important now that Frank, with his poor judgement tainted by his personal grudge against Kiefaber, not be allowed to make any further decisions that affect the future of The Senator Theatre.

NOTE: I wrote this the other day with emotion, as a first reaction. It's all true as far as I'm aware, but it could be made more specific and expanded upon. I could talk about the grant for fixing the air conditioning the city gave The Senator over ten years ago, that Mr. Frank repeatedly mischaracterized to the press as a loan that Tom didn't pay back. I could talk about the city's loan guarantee, which was only ever a phantom number on paper, not actual money, but it allowed them to get their hooks into The Senator. Mr. Frank kept talking about that as if it were actual money Tom received into his bank account.

If you wonder why Tom never said much about this, it's simple, really. When the bad guys are figuratively holding your family hostage, you tend to do what they say. What would you do if someone was threatening to turn your family out on the street?

The truth is, Tom never got anything from Baltimore City that he hasn't repaid many times over in taxes and economic vitality for this area generated by his hard work. And now he is losing everything. Everything. Without going into the horror of what that means, this is something nobody should ever have to watch a friend endure. People who know Tom often remark that it's a wonder he can still stand up, with all that he's gone through. And that's why I wrote this piece.

BDC Issues Senator Theatre RFP

The Senator Theatre RFP is available. Proposals are due by November 20th. You can download it from the Baltimore Development Corporation (BDC), if you want to register on their site. Otherwise, you can download it without registering here.

The Senator Theatre Auction and Why it Won’t Be Contested

Baltimore City and the Baltimore Development Corporation [BDC] are set to finalize their takeover of The Senator Theatre on September 19th, if no compelling objection to the ratification of the auction is filed with the Baltimore City Circuit Court by the end of Friday, September 18th.

There are numerous reasons why the manipulated results of the recent auction sale of The Senator Theatre should be invalidated by the court, but that’s not going to happen.

Here are some of the primary reasons why the auction results will not be overturned:

Circuit Courts rarely invalidate foreclosure auctions, particularly one that was initiated by the Mayor’s Office of Baltimore City after they bought The Senator Theatre’s commercial loan from 1st Mariner Bank and took on the legal position of the lender.

In these unprecedented circumstances, the City had a legal mandate as the regulated lender to follow established procedures of fairness and impartiality in conducting a foreclosure auction sale of a citizen’s private property.

The authority and responsibility to evaluate and enforce those established lender auction sale regulations, however, is ultimately in the hands of an elected Baltimore City Circuit Court judge.

It’s an outrage that the powers that be in city government and the BDC seized their long sought opportunity to take control of The Senator from its owner, who had simply sought their assistance, along with business and residential leaders, to transition the renowned theatre to not-for-profit, community-based ownership.

In their obvious effort to thwart non-profit ownership conversion of The Senator and gain full control of the theatre (and other strategically located real estate parcels owned by Tom Kiefaber), the City and BDC representatives first impugned his professional reputation through the media, as they have done to others in the past before their property is taken. They then proceeded to become the lender, pointedly undermine the validity of the recent Senator Theatre auction, and control the outcome with a clear sense of impunity.

The best shot at invalidating the auction would be an objection filed by the soon-to-be former property owner, Tom Kiefaber. Tom has made it clear, however, that he cannot object to the court’s ratification of the auction, for unspecified reasons that he refuses to delineate or discuss.

Having followed this unfolding saga and investigated the many odd and circuitous developments, it is safe to assume that Kiefaber’s uncharacteristic refusal to join an effort to resist our city government’s abuses of power is due to his apparent fear of even worse consequences for him and his family.

Tom Kiefaber, devastated by the coordinated attacks on his professional reputation and the corrupt “taking” of his beloved historic theatre by city government, is now behaving like a traumatized and fearful hostage --- one who supports terrorist demands on camera, while off-camera there is clearly a weapon threatening him and his family. It’s a heartbreaking situation for those who understand that a monumental injustice has victimized an accomplished man and his family who have done so much to benefit Baltimore City and our community.

This situation is a recent reminder that something is rotten in Gotham City.

We thought for a while that, as Baltimore City taxpayers, we might be able to put a citizen’s group together of figurative stockholders who have been financially harmed by the lender’s actions, which cheated the citizen/stockholders in an illegitimate scheme intended to benefit a few administrative insiders.

The hope was that a credible citizen activist challenge to the ratification of the auction might have legal standing to file an objection to the ratification of the auction in circuit court. We have received legal advice from more than one attorney discouraging this course of action. We’ve been told that the basic concept and the cumulative documentation that the auction’s outcome was significantly tainted both have merit, but there would be little chance that a Baltimore Circuit Court judge would rule in favor of the owner and the community over the Mayor’s office and the BDC.

Even if a citizen activist effort prevailed in court, the outcome would be to hold a new auction with significantly increased fees, and the folks pulling the levers of power in Baltimore would likely take further punitive action, to the detriment of Tom and his family, putting them in an even worse position. Perhaps that explains Tom’s aversion to the concept and his refusal to even discuss it with our group.

Despite deep concerns over ratification of the sham auction we would never risk triggering further harm and trauma to come to Tom and his family. They’ve made so many personal sacrifices to protect The Senator Theatre, and keep it open and operating in an award-winning fashion, as a classy anchor and source of civic pride since 1939. In fact, we all owe Tom Kiefaber and his extended family a huge debt of gratitude for their consistent success in keeping The Senator intact and operating for 70 years, when so many historic theatres nationwide were shuttered and abandoned.

Now we look ahead to the next step in the process. I hope that through the RFP process we can help to ensure that The Senator will be protected and continue to evolve, as envisioned by its former owner and the community, as the region’s premiere educational and entertainment venue, under non-profit ownership.

BDC's July 20 RFP Draft for The Senator

I have obtained the July 20th draft of the RFP for The Senator Theatre and converted it to HTML. You can read it here. This is the second draft of which I'm aware.

Now I'm going to brag about my track record.

I predicted in early February that the City was "at least as likely to bring in a developer or a national chain as to create a community-owned nonprofit" for The Senator. While we don't know the end result, we know the city's steering committee recommended against a non-profit in April.

I suspected in January that the City's steering committee would recommend against The Senator becoming a non-profit, which they did in April.

I predicted in early March that the City would let The Senator go to a foreclosure auction to "clear the debt."

I predicted various times, starting in mid-March that the City's actions, including CHAP restrictions and various attempts by City officials to talk down the value of the theatre would confuse potential buyers and scare bidders away from any auction, which ended up happening, according to restaurateur and caterer Eddie Dopkin, who registered as a bidder at the auction:

Dopkin would neither confirm nor deny that he made a bid. Auctioneers would not say who besides the city placed a bid, citing confidentiality.

But Dopkin did say that if the city does issue an RFP, “I would seriously look at it.”

Dopkin said that questions about parking and other issues may have limited bidding.

“I don’t think a sensible person would buy it without knowing all the answers,” he said. “I think it limited all the bids.”

This obfuscation of the situation by the City seems to have been intentional and in my opinion essentially resulted in a rigged auction situation, where the City was able to take The Senator very cheaply.

The reason I'm bragging about my track record is, this is not over. If the auction is ratified (which it might not be), the city will then control The Senator through their RFP process. If I start predicting what will happen with that, or with the larger picture in the Belvedere Square district, just remember that I have a track record, OK?

What I'm hearing is that the City's plans don't just involve The Senator, but the entire Belvedere Square district. As I hear more, I'll be reporting on it. I'm saying right now, there is a larger plan afoot.

Senator Theatre Auction Date/Time Set

I just received this in an email from the York Road Partnership, a local community/business association. It's an email from Kristen Mitchell of the Baltimore Development Corporation.

Hello,

I wanted to let you know that the City has scheduled the auction for the Senator Theater for Wednesday, July 22, at 11:00 a.m., at the Senator(5904 York Road). We are working with Alex Cooper Auctioneers, and more information will be available soon on their website. We also plan to post the information on BDC's website, historic theater websites, historic preservation websites, the Daily Record, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Baltimore Sun.

Please forward this information to your contacts. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call me.

Kristen

Kristen Mitchell
Senior Economic Development Officer
Commercial Revitalization
Baltimore Development Corporation
36 S. Charles Street, Suite 1600
Baltimore, MD 21201-3015
kmitchell@baltimoredevelopment.com
Phone: 410-837-9305
Direct: 410-779-3837
Fax: 410-837-6363
www.baltimoredevelopment.com

The Kim Clark Show at The Senator Theatre

My title is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but last week's community meeting at The Senator Theatre and subsequent Baltimore Sun articles have revealed Kim Clark of the BDC to be an interesting, complex public figure with nuanced opinions and a flexible, changeable mind. If one were being unkind, one might say flip-flopper.

Now that I and others have videos and audio of the highlights of the meeting put together, let's examine the many conflicting opinions of that multi-faceted personality known as Kim Clark.

First of all, if you only have time to watch one video of the meeting, let it be this one from Arlette Productions. This highlights the discussion about the city's CHAP designation, which Kim Clark called "ill-timed" and "unnecessary," saying she had "in other people's face discussions" about it. I would have thought you only have "in other people's face discussions" if something is really wrong with what's happening.



But Clark softened her view about CHAP after the meeting, according to the Baltimore Sun.

Wednesday, both Clarke and state Sen. Joan Carter Conway, who called the meeting, questioned the timing and wisdom of the commission's action. But Friday, Clarke sounded less concerned: "I don't think it's as much of a roadblock as some people portray it to be."

Clark has changed her position about the likelihood of the theatre being sold at auction, too. In the meeting, she said she thought it unlikely that anyone would bid a million dollars for the theatre at auction, something she was strongly questioned on, given the extraordinary value and unique nature of The Senator.



After the meeting, she said that at least two parties with the necessary resources are interested.

Clark said she has heard from at least two prospective bidders -- one from Maryland, one from outside the state -- with the financial wherewithal to pay at least the minimum price for the theater. Plus, she said: "I'm hearing from other parties that they have been contacted. There seems to be definite interest out there."

OK, now to be fair, it may be there has been sudden interest since word of the auction got out that is surprising to Kim Clark, though not at all surprising to those of us who know and love The Senator Theatre.

But still, given that she does seem to change her mind a lot, can we really take her seriously when, confronted with the fact that her comments in a Daily Record article a couple of months ago made it seem that someone in city hall may have a personal grudge against Senator owner Tom Kiefaber, she claimed to have been misquoted? Her comments in the Daily Record set off a negative slew of nasty defamation of Tom Kiefaber that derailed the focus on The Senator from finding an appropriate solution to its future, by the way. Here you can (barely) hear her denying that she ever made those comments (she was off-mic for the denial). The comment she responds to with her denial can be found starting at about 4 minutes into this video:



What a fascinating character she is. Complex is the word, I believe.

Unnecessary and Ill-Timed: Baltimore City's CHAP action on The Senator Theatre

See why Baltimore City's CHAP action on The Senator Theatre is costing the taxpayers almost a million dollars that could have come from private investors. Senator Theatre owner Tom Kiefaber, members of the public, State Senator Joan Carter Conway, and Baltimore Development Corporation (BDC) Executive Vice President Kim Clark all agree: CHAP's actions were unnecessary and ill-timed.