In April, GreenState Credit Union surprised Iowa City by foreclosing on some of the city’s best-known buildings, properties owned by real estate developer Marc Moen and business associates. When news broke, one of the questions that immediately lit up social media was, “What will happen to FilmScene?”
FilmScene, the state’s oldest and largest year-round nonprofit cinema, has two locations in Iowa City. Both were in buildings GreenState foreclosed on. Responding to the concerns about FilmScene’s future, the nonprofit cinema posted a reassuring message on social media the day the foreclosures were announced.
“To clarify, FilmScene owns its condominium units at The Chauncey and has lease options for our Ped Mall location through October 2030,” the message said. “This foreclosure does not involve us directly and we do not anticipate any immediate impact on our operations.”
That good news was followed a month later by some bad news. The Trump administration informed FilmScene, along with other arts organizations across the country, that its National Endowment for the Arts grant was being canceled, because the work being supported by those grants was no longer “prioritized by the President,” according to the mass email sent to grant recipients.
“We’ll find a way,” Andrew Sherburne, FilmScene’s co-founder and executive director, told Little Village in May. “With or without that NEA funding, we’re going to keep doing the programming our members and our community count on.”
But after this year’s rough spring, FilmScene had some unalloyed good news to announce on Friday.
FilmScene has “partnered with Resilient Sustainable Future for Iowa City (RSFIC) to purchase the building at 118 E. College St, home to its longstanding FilmScene on the Ped Mall venue, supporting its long-term presence in downtown Iowa City,” the cinema said in a news release on Friday.
FilmScene started working on ways to secure the future of its Ped Mall location beyond the end of its lease as soon as GreenState foreclosed on the building.
“From the beginning we wanted to try to make sure the building was in the hands of someone who cared about Iowa City and cared about FilmScene,” Andrew Sherburne told Little Village on Friday. “In talking with RSFIC, they said our mission aligns with theirs. We share a lot of the same visions for what Iowa City can be, so this was just a wonderful way to come together.”
RSFIC is a Iowa City-based nonprofit private foundation founded in 2022 with a mission of “building long-term, systemic resilience in Iowa City,” as its site explained. In the past, it has assisted organizations such as the Wright House of Fashion and Tamarack Discovery School, purchasing buildings and equipment for them. It’s also worked with FilmScene, commissioning “Stories of Community,” a series of short films focused on resilience.
The Ped Mall building was purchased for $2.3 million, and RSFIC “is providing a mortgage to FilmScene,” according to the news release. “FilmScene will have two years to raise the $230,000 down payment.”
The building at 118 E College is where FilmScene first opened its door in 2013. The building itself welcomed its first tenant, the Iowa City Packing and Provision Company, in the 1860s. Over the next 100-plus years it was the location of a variety of businesses, including a furniture store and casket makers — complete with a casket showroom — until the 1970s, when it became the home of Vito’s, a fondly remembered bar and restaurant.
Vito’s closed in 2011, when FilmScene “was just an idea and we had nothing to our name but enthusiasm,” Sherburne recalled. “We were looking around downtown Iowa City for a place you could shoehorn in a single screen. And it just so happened that at that same moment, Marc Moen and Bobby Jett had purchased the building and were renovating.”
Sherburne called Moen, who was immediately supportive of the idea of leasing space to a nonprofit cinema.
“He trusted us,” Sherburne said. “He believed that if he built it, we could find the funding for it. It took 800 enthusiastic supporters pitching in anything from a dollar to $1,000, but thanks to the goodwill of the people of Iowa City, we did it.”
Sherburne said that community support is what has allowed FilmScene to succeed and expand to its much larger second location in the Chauncey in 2019. He believes that support will be the key in FilmScene fulfilling the potential its partnership with RSFIC is providing, and take ownership of its space at 118 E College.
“From day one, the Ped Mall theater has really been a labor of love,” Sherburne said.
FilmScene and RSFIC will celebrate their partnership and the future of the Ped Mall theater with a two-hour open house on Thursday, Aug. 14 at 4 p.m.
