Timing is everything in life. For Tom Kiefaber, raising more than $105,000 to keep ownership of the historic Senator Theatre took him right up to his Feb. 21 deadline. At the 11th hour, a united community was able to come up with the needed money, the Senator Web site said. Located across from Belvedere Square, the Senator serves as a lightning rod the community and provides a key iconic draw for local businesses.
Even today?s generation has a stake in the Senator.
“I?m glad because I am not going to lose my job, for one,” said Kathy Kiefner, 17, a resident of Hamilton and two-year employee at the theater. “The Senator is like family to me.”
Rallying together, more than $100,000 was raised to save the theater. Whether it was dropping off money or through the use of a PayPal account set up on the Senator?s Web site, the popular saying among residents became S.OS.: Save Our Senator.
If Kiefaber, 54, and the community had failed, the Senator would have gone to auction Wednesday and faced the possibility of being purchased by an outside company.
Kiefaber was more than $90,000 in arrears of delinquent mortgage payments to 1st Mariner bank, The Examiner reported in an article published Feb. 7. In 2002, Kiefaber took out a $1.2 million mortgage with the local lending institution to reopen the Rotunda and refurbish parts of the theatre.
Frank H. Durkee, Kiefaber?s grandfather, first constructed the Senator in 1939. In 1989, Kiefaber purchased the Senator from Durkee enterprises, keeping the theatre in the family. Since that time, the Senator has felt the crush of local megaplex movie theaters with dozens of screens putting the squeeze on its family and community-oriented appeal.
“In the coming days we will be posting information about our plans to help [ensure] that The Senator Theatre will never again become perched on such a perilous precipice,” said Kiefabor on the Senator Web site.
