Published: Sunday, April 9, 2000 - Saint Paul Pioneer Press

Coming Attraction?

If the plot succeeds, the old Mounds Theatre on St. Paul's East Side will be fixed up for use as a community center and performing arts space.

KARL J. KARLSON - STAFF WRITER

Thanks to the generosity of a longtime St. Paulite, a long-shuttered movie house on St. Paul's East Side may find new life as a community center and place for the performing arts.

But first, there are a couple of matters to take care of -- some major fund raising and a major cleanup.

The former Mounds Theatre, a 78-year-old building, is stuffed with decades of accumulated items big and small.

So, as East Side volunteers haul out each item, George Hardenbergh, a former Ramsey County commissioner who bought the building about 35 years ago, will observe.

"He'll give us the nod -- it's junk or it is saved,"'' said Raeann Ruth, director of Portage for Youth, the East Side community group that is the beneficiary of Hardenbergh's gift.

"He's giving us the building. Can you imagine that?" Ruth said last week during a tour of the 700-seat theatre that Hardenbergh has been using for storage since the mid-1960s.

Inside, piled on rows of theatre seats, are scores of metal and wooden organ pipes, old computers and manuals, a couch or two, a harpsichord, a piano buried under file boxes, and political signs left over from Hardenbergh's 1966-1970 term on the Ramsey County Board.

All the items are thick with dust.

"I hate to see things go away," Hardenbergh said of the items.

But he has held onto the theatre long enough, he says. He bought it with the idea of installing a large pipe organ as part of his hobby and interest in organ music and organs. But he never got around to finishing the project.

Now, at age 82, "I'm in no shape to do any hard work," he said. "I know I'll never get it done. The city was after me to do stuff with it. It cost a lot to heat . . .," he said in a telephone interview from his current home in Forest Lake.

Asked why he would give away a building, Hardenbergh responded with the answer that he gives those who ask him why he hasn't sold all the stuff he's collected over the decades: "Who'd buy it?"

Portage for Youth couldn't.

"I knew we could not afford to buy it," Ruth said, "so I asked him if he'd give it to us, and he said yes. I almost fell out of the balcony."

She saw the boarded-up theatre, one of several closed buildings along a stretch of Hudson Road near Earl Street, last fall, while she was looking around for more space for the group. She knew the building from her movie-going as a teen-ager, and she tracked down Hardenbergh through tax records.

"It can be an arts center, a community center used by groups like 4-H, not just for Portage for Youth," she said.

Ruth created Portage for Youth seven years ago to help young people. At first, it involved taking a few kids on canoe trips, "but I realized they needed more than that," she said.

Now the East Side group works with Hmong girls, ages 8 to 15, involving them in such projects as photography, music and writing. About 30 girls are involved now, including five who have formed the singing group Jagged Innocence, which is working on its first CD, a collection of songs they wrote.

Hardenbergh's offer is contingent on the community raising enough money to refurbish the building. That could cost $750,000. Ruth said supporters already have raised $400,000, which includes a $200,000 grant from the city.

They would also like to raise an extra $350,000 to establish an endowment that could provide continuing support and operation of the building, she said.

Bob Raddatz of Raddatz and Sons, a contractor for the group, said plans call for adding dressing rooms and some office space because the building was built for movies, not stage productions. He pronounced the building in sound shape and said it has some interesting features.

"They'd pump water from a well at the back of the building and spritz water out on to the audience as air conditioning," he said.

Supporters hope to save as many of the seats as possible and then refurbish and reinstall them. They also hope to uncover the original red brick beneath the stucco on the building's front. "We'll pull some off and see," Raddatz said.

Norm Tubbesing, who grew up three blocks from the theatre, recalled its community importance.

"It used to be a big part of the neighborhood, but the freeway came through and took out Hastings Avenue. Things change," he said.

It would be nice for the place to be cleaned up and used again, said Tubbesing, who hung around the theatre enough to get a job there managing it for 10 years. He was its owner and operator from 1960 to 1964, when it closed. It was later sold to Hardenbergh.

Ruth hopes to have the community center in operation in about two years, and some of the Portage youths can hardly wait.

On a tour of the theatre last week, Mai Yia, a singer with Jagged Innocence, looked up toward the darkened balcony and the ceiling 30 feet above and said, `"I want to sing here."

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Karl J. Karlson can be reached at kkarlson@pioneerpress.comor (651) 228-5260.