Man restoring Hawley theater built in 1920
By Jeff Baird
The Forum - 06/17/2002
Jim Bortnem rummages through a large filing cabinet stashed in a closet of the dilapidated Garrick Theatre in Hawley, Minn.

“Look at this,” he said, grabbing an old Baby Ruth candy bar box.

Beneath a layer of foam peanuts rest two antique camera lenses.

The equipment alone is worth much more than the $1 Bortnem paid for the tax forfeited building and its contents earlier this year.

The Garrick has been a fixture in Hawley since 1920, and Bortnem had planned to give it a much needed renovation.

But to his surprise, he found much of txhe theater’s original equipment still inside.

“It’s like (the previous owners) just locked up and left,” he said.

The theater’s two carbon arc antique film projectors sit in an upstairs room, ready to roll.

They stand about 6 feet tall and look like they could weigh close to a ton each.

“They’re original,” he said

A Feb. 22, 1967, Forum newspaper with the glaring headline “U.S. Unit Suffers Heavy Battle Losses,” sits in the adjoining four-bedroom apartment.

A bulky calculator and chair sit in the downstairs box office, and the concession stand is still stocked with a popcorn dispenser, an old Frigidaire refrigerator and a soda machine offering the mysterious Lemon Lime and orange drinks.

Take away the thick layer of grime and dank smell, and it’s not too hard to imagine the place bustling with customers.

The actual theater, however, is a different story.

The ceiling looks like it has sustained heavy fire damage and is about ready to collapse.

“Had we had a heavy snow I bet we would have lost it,” Bortnem said pointing skyward.

The seats, which resemble old Converse basketball shoes with their red backs and blue base, are covered in ceiling rot.

Dirty red drapes protect the cloth film screen.

The condition is a far cry from what the theater must have once looked like.

Owners advertised the Garrick as the “finest movie house in the northwest,” for the 1920 premiere of “Pollyanna.”

The theater would have attracted as many as 600 people to town at one time.

Ron Ulven, who was born in rural Hawley in 1938, remembers watching Roy Rogers and Gene Autry westerns at the theater.

“That’s where I went to all my movies as a kid,” he said. “We would come in half way because of work. We would watch to the end and then stay and watch the beginning.”

When Ulven left Hawley in 1955, he said the theater was still doing well, but when he returned in 1969, it was closed.

He said the theater was reopened in the 1970s but closed again in the mid-1980s.

“One of the main problems was the cost of utilities,” Ulven said. “Heating the building was expensive. It’s not insulated.”

Numerous attempts to reach Vint Floberg, the theater’s previous owner, were unsuccessful.

But his brother Maurice Floberg said the rise of the mega-theaters made the Garrick unprofitable.

First up for Bortnem is to remove and restore the old theater seats.

Next he will rip out the ceiling and clean out the second floor.

“Then we’ll close the roof, insulate the building and decide how to make it the most useable,” the rural Hawley resident and owner of Jim Bortnem Enterprises of Fargo said. “You can’t look at this as one large project. It’s several little ones.”

The theater will most likely serve as both a place for plays and movies.

“My job is to renovate it,” he said. “I’ll find someone else to operate.

“If not I’ll have the largest home theater around,” he said laughing.

He guesses he has about two years of work left.

There has been interest in restoring the Garrick Theatre in the past, said Lisa Jetvig, Hawley’s clerk and city treasurer.

The deal, however, was always contingent on the city paying about $45,000 to replace the roof.

Bortnem didn’t attach that condition.

Clay County agreed to pay to have asbestos removed from the theater and turned the property over to the Hawley Economic Development Authority.

The county benefited from the transaction because it would have had remove the asbestos had the ceiling collapsed and the building been demolished.

Hawley, a town of about 1,800, got a theater and another business on the tax rolls and Bortnem preserved an important part of the town history.

“That building could have been saved,” he said pointing to a vacant lot close to the Garrick. “I didn’t want to see another parking lot with gravel in it in Hawley. This is a personal thing.”

Ulven can’t wait to see the finished project.

“We are thrilled that he would come in and put money into it and preserve it as a piece of Hawley’s history,” he said. “It will be great to see the lights on again. It will be great to take the grandchildren and tell them what it was used to be like.”

Readers can reach Forum reporter Jeff Baird at (701) 241-5535

Copyright 2002 Forum Communications, all rights reserved.

I called this guy up yesterday and said I gould go have a look at the booth in about a month, after he gets the roof stabilized. This should be fun

I am currently serving on a non-profit board that is trying to establish a theatre for the youth in our small town (2,000 people). Our goal is being shifted from saving the historical front of the current theater to renovating a different building (an old auto service garage). The reasoning being that the people of our community think the building isn’t anything special and they would rather have a park in the middle of the downtown area.

My question for all of you is, from face value do you feel that I should continue fighting for the historical theater or just let it go?

Keep fighting for the old theater. After seeing a picture of it, I say that old place is definitely worth keeping. Forget trying to 'renovate' an auto garage----it'll just end up with poor acoustics, poor sight lines, flat floor, etc. The theater is what they should put their efforts into as that's the purpose it was built for to begin with. Here's a link to a town that restored an old theater: http://www.theindependent.com/stories/051902/new_theater19.html