(This article, reprinted with permission and featuring the Drexel theatre, appeared in The Columbus Dispatch on December 16, 2009)  12/20/09

Nonprofit created to assist theater

By Nick Chordas
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

The Bexley movie house, which opened in 1937 on E. Main Street

A nonprofit organization has been formed to "secure the future" of the struggling Drexel Theatre, which has offered art-house and specialty programming to central Ohio cinema fans for almost three decades.

Friends of the Drexel Inc. is being headed by Bexley resident Richard Stoff, president of the Ohio Business Roundtable.

Jeff Frank, who has owned and operated the Bexley theater with wife Kathy since 1981, declined to detail the venue's financial status but said it doesn't face an immediate danger of closing.

Among the first orders of business for Friends of the Drexel: to explore a nonprofit status for the theater.

"It opens all sorts of possibilities," said Stoff, citing tax- exempt contributions and grants.

His wife, lawyer Carol Zelizer Stoff, serves as vice chairwoman and secretary of the group.

The 14-member board of trustees includes E. Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University; Bonnie Milenthal of the marketing company Milenthal Group; Don Casto, a commercial real-estate developer; and Robert Lazarus Jr., a former executive for the department store.

In May, the Franks met with supporters to discuss the theater's difficulties -- a result of the economy and a light slate of "good, solid art films," Jeff Frank said at the time.

Friends of the Drexel emerged from the discussions.

"It's been very inspiring to us to see the response," Kathy Frank said.

The organization, Stoff said, is committed to action, including a possible renovation of the three-screen theater.

Karlsberger Architecture is donating design concepts.

"I think a six-month timetable is fair to really put a plan in place," Stoff said. "Then we're about execution. It's not just a study effort."

The movie house, which opened in 1937 at 2254 E. Main St., is the sole theater being operated by the Franks, who once owned the single-screen Drexel Grandview and managed the multi-screen Arena Grand and Drexel Gateway theaters.

Although attendance has improved at the Drexel in the past five or six months, Jeff Frank said, business is "still not where we'd like it to be."

"The landscape of small, independent movie theaters has changed -- especially art theaters," he said. "When you're in a midsize city like Columbus and a lot of other cities, the nonprofit route seems to be a model that's being followed."

Stoff called the group's efforts a "labor of love."

"(The Drexel) is a really distinctive aspect in this community -- the charm of it, the historic nature of it, the neighborhood filmgoing experience," he said.

"It has been part of the fabric of this community for 30 years."

nchordas@dispatch.com

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