Frederick More lived in New York City for 26 years, on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, and he used to frequent the renowned arthouse Angelika Film Center on West Houston Street.

“The movies at the Angelika were so good, movies you would never see at AMC or Regal,” he says.

When he began weekending in Madison in 1998, someone suggested he check out Madison Art Cinemas (MAC). He did, the following year.

“The first time I went to MAC was like finding the Angelika in Madison,” says More. “I love the diversity of movies there, the loyal clientele, and the comfort I feel there. I love that I can recite the opening announcement word for word, ‘Welcome to the Madison Art Cinemas…’”

More has since made his home in Madison, growing to appreciate the gems this small town has to offer, including the R.J. Julia Bookstore across the street, Willoughby’s, Steamed, Madison Coffee House, Madison Cheese Shop, and Moxie, all within walking distance of the theater.

MAC closed during the pandemic and remains closed. Its owner, Arnold Gorlick, says its opening is dependent on the receipt of federal support in the form of the Shuttered Venue Operator’s Grant (SVOG), a program designed to help business owners and operators in the arts like Gorlick, who were blindsided by the length and ferocity of the pandemic and the extended economic downtown that came in its wake.

While he waits for word on the grant, anxiously waiting with him are not only the state’s theater-goers, but also the owners of other businesses in Madison’s downtown. Together they are a tightly knit economic ecosystem, each dependent in part on the other’s success.

More could be speaking for all of them when he says of MAC, “I hope they reopen soon.”

It Will Take Money

Before that happens, Gorlick says, much work must be done.

The heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system has to be fixed and possibly upgraded. The masking—the black cloth that surrounds the screens—is falling down and needs to be reinstalled. The place needs a complete and thorough cleaning. He has to stock new inventory. He has to buy equipment to replace items in the projection booth that are now outdated and no longer up to Motion Picture Association code. There are bills to be paid, balanced against zero revenue in the past year and a half.

“It will take money to reopen,” he says.

His application to the SVOG program has been submitted and now he’s waiting.

“All I can do is wait,” he says. “I don’t know how quickly I will hear, if it will be July or the end of the summer.”

He is, in particular, looking forward to resuming the wildly popular Sunday Cinema Club. Participants from all over the state, often greeted at the door with treats and snacks purchased from local vendors and restaurants, would enjoy sneak previews of films hand-picked by Gorlick, and then engage in a moderated, often passionate and sometimes heated, discussion about those movies, ideas, and life.

Gorlick says, ideally, he’d like to open sometime in July.

“But if I don’t get the grant, I don’t reopen,” he says. “We closed the theater a year ago March 16, and it’s going to take some money to get back open.”

Grant Process Underway

Catherine Marx, the director of the Connecticut District Office of the U.S. Small Business Administration, says that as of June 14, more than $5.9 million in SVOG funds have been distributed to 24 recipients in Connecticut.

In addition to MAC, the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Center in Old Saybrook, The Ivoryton Theatre in Ivoryton, and The Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam are among the venues along the shoreline in Connecticut and in the Connecticut River Valley that have applied. As of press time on this story, none of those venues had heard back.

Venues that have received awards include the Bijou Theatre in Bridgeport ($115,960); the Downtown Cabaret Theatre Company of Bridgeport ($540,333); the Submarine Force Library & Museum in Groton ($137,247); Metro Movies in Middletown ($396,275); Lion’s Cathedral Productions in Mystic ($291,952); S.K.M. Restaurants, Inc. dba Toad’s Place in New Haven ($748,343); Niantic Cinema Corp. in Niantic ($284,148); and Fun Music Productions LLC in Redding ($1,000,107).

As of mid-day on June 21, more than 14,000 applications had been submitted overall by venue operators across the country, requesting more than $11 billion in funding, and more than 1,400 grants had been awarded nationally, totaling more than $833 million, with an average grant of about $577,000.

Committed to Providing Desperately Needed Help

When asked about MAC, Ivoryton, The Kate, and The Goodspeed, Marx said she could not comment on specific applications, but she says the SBA, which is helping to administer the program, “is committed to getting the applicants the relief they desperately need.”

The grants are being processed according to priorities established by the grant’s enabling legislation. The SVOG program was established by the Economic Aid to Hard-Hit Small Businesses, Nonprofits, and Venues Act, and amended by the American Rescue Plan Act. The program includes over $16 billion in grants to shuttered venues, to be administered by SBA’s Office of Disaster Assistance.

“First priority goes to those with a 90 percent or greater revenue loss between April 2020 through December 2020, then to those with a 70 percent or greater loss, then it will open to the wider application pool with a 25 percent or greater loss,” she says.

As might be expected of any program of this size and complexity, one that had to be built from the ground up by the SBA in very little time, the SVOG program ran into some glitches early on, further slowing down the prospect of awards for some grantees.

When combined with other programs, the SBA has helped provide billions in dollars in economic relief to America’s small businesses in a relatively short period of time. The SVOG program in particular implemented many controls for eligibility requirements, because it applied to so many different kinds of entities, each with unique requirements, SBA Administrator Isabel Guzman has been quoted as saying.

So all of that takes time.

Complexity, Lack of Flexibility

Marx says the Connecticut SBA has worked with partners to provide business owners with training and support to help them navigate the requirements and get access to assistance in a timely manner, while still meeting the eligibility requirements.

“We have a dedicated team of hundreds of reviewers working around the clock to process, approve, and disburse funds as quickly as possible to get the nation’s venues back on track. In large part because of statutory requirements—created in the last administration—the applications require extensive scrutiny,” Marx says. “To further shed some light, applicants have included anywhere from 30 to 100 documents in their applications to ensure they met the statute’s guidelines and each needs review before moving on in the grant award process.”

She says it’s important to understand why this process takes time, despite the tireless work of the SBA, the White House, and other related agencies.

“It is critical that your readers have the following context. First, inherited complexity. Millions of dollars of economic relief have already been awarded—and continue to be awarded every day—to venues through the SVOG program, but the SBA has inherited an extremely complex program that requires manual and painstaking processing of applications due to the particular requirements outlined in the statute,” Marx says.

Another issue with the program is its lack of flexibility.

“The program was not afforded the flexibility to decide who runs it and was hampered by red tape forcing the agency to at times manually review dozens of documents for a single application, unlike the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, which the administrator placed in the Office of Capital Access, and which operates more like a direct payment program,” she says.

Enough Funding for All

She also says that, even with 14,416 completed applications for $11.6 billion, as of June 21, “with over $16 billion allocated for the program, there is enough funding for all the qualified applicants that we have at this point.”

She adds that there is a set aside for smaller applicants, those with up to 50 full-time employees, of about $2 billion. “As of the most recent report, there are still funds available in this bucket. So far, about $584 million has been allocated out of the $2 billion,” she says. “Looking at the Connecticut, 24 entities that have received awards, the smallest award was under $5,600 and the largest $1 million.”

She realizes how very important this is, not only to the venues themselves and their patrons, but also to the surrounding businesses, the bookstores, the coffee shops, the restaurants, the cheese stores, which also benefit from the business and foot traffic these venues generate. MAC, for examples, draws people from all over the state, and, like The Ivoryton, The Kate, and The Goodspeed, are part of why people vacation and choose to make their homes on the Connecticut shoreline and in the Connecticut River valley.

“Concerts, plays, dance performances, movie premieres, museum exhibits—these are the lifeblood of culture and community, and often the anchor for travel, tourism, and neighborhood food and retail stores,” Marx says. “The SBA knows these venues are critical to America’s economy and understands how hard they’ve been impacted, as they were among the first to shutter. We know that for the stage and venue operators across the nation that help make this culture happen, the pandemic has been devastating. Too many have been forced to lower the final curtain on their businesses. In early 2020, our cultural venues were the first to close and now we all await their opening.”

To make sure the program helps these venues as quickly as possible, the SBA has brought on new operational staff.

“The SBA has made critical new top-to-bottom personnel changes in staffing for the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program with support from the SBA team that implemented the successful $28.6 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund,” she says.

The SBA also has optimized fraud controls to make sure the money goes to deserving business owners and operators. Other steps include increasing transparency and communication and implementing new technology.

“The SBA will provide applicants who have not had their applications fully processed weekly updates on their applications to ensure they stay informed. Further, the SBA will continue to share publicly weekly progress reports at www.SBA.gov/svogrant,” she says.

Landlord Willing to Help

Jerry Davis, the managing member of Davis Realty, which owns the building where MAC is located, says, while Gorlick awaits word, the company will continue to do what it can to help.

“You know when all of this began last year...the expectation was that we would be shut down for two months and then re-open,” he says.

His business was among those hard hit by the pandemic and economic downturn. Despite that, he says the family remains committed to having a cinema as an anchor in downtown Madison.

When the shutdown started, “we said to Arnold, ‘We support you 100 percent and you’re not going to pay us rent for these couple of months when you shut down, and we’ll continue to partner with you, and make this re-opening happen.’

“And they are by far the single largest tenant in that building,” he says. “It’s a painful sacrifice from a business point of view. But we have made that sacrifice because for us the theater is very meaningful.”

He says that in the 1990s his father, Jack Davis—who recently passed away, not long after Jerry’s mom, Helen Davis, died—was committed to finding another theater operator after the last one closed in that location.

“He really wanted that center of gravity to remain in Madison,” he says.

And, in 2012, when the expensive question of converting to a digital format came up, requiring a significant investment, “It was an existential question for the theater. He could not afford to do that conversion without our help, so we ended up financing that whole conversion.”

‘We Have To Show Up’

Now, following the pandemic, “here we are again. It’s our fervent hope he gets open. And whether the SVOG helps...I don’t know. That remains to be seen. But the most important thing is to get it open. As I’ve said to Arnold, I know there’s a huge amount of work to be done. It’s not just a matter of flipping the light switch. We’ve offered to help bridge the cost until the grant comes through.”

Davis says he sees the theater as “the beating heart in the center of town. It draws people from all over the place. The Sea House [restaurant next door] and Café Allegre [the restaurant down the street] benefit from it. R.J. Julia benefits from it. And we need it back.”

One more thing is needed, he says, and that is loyal customers. Davis worries that people have gotten used to streaming movies in their homes, and that some movies are now opening simultaneously online and in theaters.

“I’m confident at some point it will reopen and I’m really hoping, that, you know, people come back and with purpose,” he sys. “Not just casually. The theater is only going to continue to exist if people put the clicker down, decide not to stream movies, and come out. That will be the key to its survival. And that’s true for every store in town. People say they want more restaurants and shops in town, but we have to show up. That’s the most important thing for us as a community, to show up.”

‘If We Can Help...’

As Gorlick waits for word on the SVOG and plans his next steps, there are many theater goers waiting to do just that.

“It’s the only theater we go to,” says Vicki Littell of Madison.

Sarah Wadle of Essex says, “I pray this cinema doesn’t close forever. Having access to small independent theaters is one aspect that makes living on the shoreline here in Connecticut so wonderful! There are movies that just have to be seen and experienced in the theater!”

Denise Harvey, who lives in Madison and runs The Madison Coffee House near the theater, likewise can’t wait to step back into the theater.

“It was a Tuesday night tradition with a bunch of friends,” she says. “Six-dollar martini night and dinner at Café Allegre, and 7:30 p.m. movie at MAC.”

Susan Bianconi lives in New Haven and says “it’s strikingly designed, and a great spot. We’ve come from New Haven to enjoy it and its staff. Madison is so lucky.”

Janet Brown Connolly, who runs The Audubon Shop in Madison with her husband, says it remains their favorite place “for a double date or to escape a heat wave, or get lost in humor, drama, or music for a couple of hours. MAC is a fixture we need! We miss it so! We hope Arnold gets his grant!”

Jessica Littell of Madison says the cinema is a favorite spot for her and her friends: “We see just about every movie shown there, from the popular to the mainstream. We will be in line when...it opens.”

Robin Brace, who runs the True Bikram Yoga studio in town, can’t wait for it to reopen.

“I was wondering what the status was,” she says. “If we can help in any way, let us know!”