Syndicated Joe Mathews column gets it wrong about the Tower Theatre controversy. Why would the Bee publish it?

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Last time I looked, even opinion columnists need to follow fact-checking standards. How could the Bee editorial page let this statement through?

‘Saving’ the Tower

From reading Mathews’ column, you’d think the Tower Theatre is in danger of falling down. He compares it to two other formerly shuttered historic theaters in Fresno: the Hardy’s and the Wilson, both of them taken over by churches. The comparison doesn’t work. The Tower Theatre was never decaying or crumbling; for many years, it has been a vigorous, inclusive performing arts center. (Until the pandemic, of course.)

He writes: “In wise communities, churches and their neighbors look past their differences and focus on their shared interest in saving the old buildings.”

First of all, what a completely condescending remark.

Mathews might as well have written: “In the more sophisticated areas of the state, you’ll find enlightened folks who realize that we have to be tolerant of people who believe differently than us. Alas, poor Fresnans, how gauche and illiberal it is for you to be protesting in your little ‘holy war.’ ” (Yes, he uses that term — “holy war” — in his column.)

Later he points to his own enlightened community in the San Gabriel Valley, where he can go to a church-owned restored theater and watch “Miracle on 34th Street.”

. . .

Other TMR coverage: MORE THAN 2,100 PEOPLE AND BUSINESSES DECLARE: TOWER THEATRE SHOULDN’T BE OWNED BY A CHURCH

. . .
And: AS ‘SAVE THE TOWER’ FOLKS GEAR UP FOR A PITCHED BATTLE, THEY ASK YOU TO SIGN ANOTHER LETTER OF DISSENT

Second, this isn’t about saving an old building or failing business. Owner Lawrence Abbate told the Bee that the Tower Theatre was coming off a great 2019 and expecting to have an even bigger 2020 before the pandemic hit. “It was off the hook,” Abbate said. “It just couldn’t get any busier.”

Finally, Mathews doesn’t follow his Hardy’s/Wilson comparison all the way through. Those beautiful theaters have been saved, yes, but they offer no secular programming whatsoever. They’re churches. They shouldn’t be expected to. The Tower Theatre has operated for decades as a secular cultural venue. It’d be much harder to lose that compared to an abandoned building.

The only option?

In his column, Mathews ignores the complicated backstory of the Tower issue. He implies there is only one potential buyer for the theater. How do we know that when it was never officially put on the market? The Tower controversy is a sprawling, wobbly tale that includes unnamed “angel investors,” allegations of sweetheart management deals, tricky finances, a church breaking the city’s COVID safety restrictions in the name of religion, and much, much more.

Mathews also glosses over the weekly protests that have continued for a mind-boggling 27 weeks, some of them drawing as many as 250 people. Think about that: Demonstrations have persisted for half a year, through the cold and thick of COVID and into the broiling Fresno summer. Organizers estimate that nearly 3,000 people have attended these weekly gatherings in total — concerned residents giving up their Sunday mornings to fight for their neighborhood.

It’s the zoning

The surest indication, however, that Mathews didn’t do his research is that the word “zoning” doesn’t appear once in his column. That’s a significant omission considering that the zoning argument is at the heart of the opponents’ opposition to the sale. The Tower District Specific Plan prohibits religious assembly in a building that large and in that location. As a tenant, Adventure Church has been blithely breaking that restriction for many months. And there’s no mention of area bars and nightclubs and the difficulty that future owners of those businesses may face in coming years of retaining conditional-use permits when they’re located next to a church.

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Rather than the author spouting feel-good platitudes about why can’t we all just get along — or taking his own neighborhood example of a church-renovated theater and then trying to extrapolate that to a vastly different scenario —  we should be talking about grassroots democracy, neighborhood determination, and finding ways to encourage diversity and inclusion. This is especially the case in a city that features churches on what seem like every major intersection. Yet the Bee just reported that 23% of Fresno residents do not affiliate with an identified religion. That’s a quarter of its population. We need some balance.

Don’t be naive

In terms of the bigger picture, Mathews missed the most important point of all:

The Tower sale is a front in the culture war. This story is about losing an iconic centerpiece of Fresno’s only truly self-declared progressive neighborhood to a zoning-busting religious organization preaching intolerance. It’s about a concerted effort by religious institutions to take local control away. It’s about using the freedom-of-religion argument (and a right-leaning U.S. Supreme Court) as a special trump card to walk over secular society.

Thanks for dropping by, Mr. Mathews and Zocalo Public Square, but we have a lot more important things to worry about than when we can catch the next screening of “Miracle on 34th Street.”