Strand's future brightens with new owner

By Anthony Ronzio

ROCKLAND (Jan 23): A longtime Rockport summer resident is negotiating to purchase the Strand Cinema, and told VillageSoup on Thursday he hopes to have the historic theater reopened this summer.

Matthew Simmons, a Texas native with a home on Beauchamp Point, said he's close to signing a purchase agreement with John Crowley, president of Flagship Cinemas, to take ownership of the Strand pending an environmental inspection of the property.

"The plan is to restore the Strand to its original appearance, removing the little theater and returning it into a balcony," Simmons told VillageSoup in an exclusive interview.

Simmons said he will try to return popular first-run movies to the downtown theater; the Strand will also focus on independent films and timeless classics.

His plans include "restoring the American Saturday matinee with old news of the weeks, serial movies, cartoons and the best of the best of the movies people of my generation all grew up on," Simmons wrote in an e-mail.

Showings of 3-D scary movies and some of the cowboy and Indian genre are also in Simmons' plans.

Last month the Maine Attorney General's office sued Flagship Cinema to force a sale of the Strand, which has been shuttered since December 2001, when Flagship purchased it from a New Jersey man, Peter Vivian.

The Dondis family of Rockland owned the 80-year-old Strand for decades, before selling it to Vivian in 2000.

Twice since Flagship purchased the Strand have independent operators allegedly leased the theater with reopening plans, but neither came to fruition.

Francis Ackerman, the assistant attorney general investigating the Strand case, called Flagship's handling of the theater a "textbook" case of an antitrust violation.

The new owner, Simmons, is chief operating officer of Simmons & Company International, the world's largest energy investment banking firm, with headquarters in Houston, Texas and Aberdeen, Scotland.

Since it was founded in 1976, Simmons & Company International has handled more than 400 investments with a combined dollar value of approximately $55 billion.

Simmons is a member of the Farnsworth Art Museum's Board of Directors, a key energy advisor to President Bush and a member of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.

Simmons is also a past president of the Harvard Business School Alumni Association, a trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and a member of the National Petroleum Council.

John Root, the city of Rockland's code enforcement officer, toured the Strand with representatives of the Rockland Fire Department and a Warren construction firm, Omni Construction, on Jan. 14.

Root said the theater does need some renovations, per the fire department, before it can be opened for business.

Simmons said it's his intent to reopen the Strand by this summer, and then perhaps close the theater for a full restoration over the winter.

Aside from films, Simmons said his plan entails having cooperative efforts with other local institutions to make the Strand a "place for lectures, live musical events and even small plays."

"We also plan to apply for the proper historical designation with the state and the National Trust for Historic Preservation," Simmons said.

He said he admires the trust's initiatives in preserving American theaters from the 1920s and 1930s, like the Strand, that have fallen victim to disrepair or development.

"They are rapidly disappearing," Simmons said. "Luckily, this will not be the fate of the Strand."

This article first appeared January 23, 2004 at villagesoup.com.