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Siffblog: Behind the Eight Ball (or wrecking ball) - Individual
 
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August 29, 2006

Behind the Eight Ball (or wrecking ball)

David Jeffers

Lament for The Roxy
This comment was recently posted to www.cinematreasures.com

The Roxy-2005 (photo-Scott Neff)
What was formerly the Renton Roxy, has been converted into a 'for-rent' hall, used primarily as a storefront church. When the building was last sold several years ago, the buyer did donate the vertical marquee to the city, but it's unclear if it could ever be restored. The void was covered with sheets of oriented strand board and painted beige, along with the rest of the facade. All of the ornamental lighting was removed and the original ticket booth was quickly ripped out and thrown away (it could have been saved with the marquee), replaced by a landscape border brick planter with plastic plants in the same footprint. The Roxy was our local neighborhood theater and is sorely missed. Single screen theaters are rare as hen’s teeth these days and the Roxy struggled on far longer than anyone expected. Our alternatives in Renton are the eight screen Renton Cinemas about a mile away, and the East Valley 13, located in industrial South Renton. The City of Renton recently built a multimillion-dollar performing arts center as part of the renovation of Renton High School two blocks north of the Roxy. Adjacent to the old theater, the city has created an urban center over the past decade which includes an urban park, a multi-level parking structure, a large single floor building with a high bow-truss ceiling (formerly part of a car dealership) that was converted into a multi-use facility, and a bus transit center. The goal of city planners was to create a new heart in the old commercial downtown core. Throughout this development, historic structures have been demolished (very few remain in Renton), replaced by large apartment blocks and commercial structures, resulting in fundamental character changes to the neighborhood. The Roxy has avoided demolition, so far, but this result seems inevitable in an environment of small town politics, driven by greedy developers and sorely lacking intelligent planning or social responsibility.

Posted by David Jeffers at August 29, 2006 10:59 PM
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