The future of two arthouse cinemas in northern Michigan is uncertain.

The Chalfonte Foundation, the Detroit-based nonprofit that acquired the Elk Rapids Cinema last year, announced earlier this month that the Elk Rapids Township Assessor’s Office had denied its request for a property tax exemption. The foundation says the exemption is critical to keeping the theater’s doors open and has contested the matter before the Michigan Tax Tribunal.

“The burden of over $10,000 in summer taxes alone makes it nearly impossible for the theater to sustain its operations,” the Chalfonte Foundation explains in a recent petition on Change.org. “Without the exemption, the financial burden could jeopardize the future of this vital community resource.”

Chalfonte President Aaron Timlin is confident the tax court will rule in favor of the nonprofit, noting that many arthouse theaters are owned and operated by nonprofits and that many are exempt from property taxes. Local examples include the Lyric Theater in Harbor Springs and the Bay Theater in Suttons Bay.

Timlin said the assessor’s office denied the exemption request on the grounds that the Elk Rapids Cinema building “is not used exclusively for charitable purposes.” The sticking point, he says, is that the theater charges admission for the films it shows.

“I don’t think they’re acting in bad faith, I just think they don’t understand the law,” Timlin says of the assessor’s decision. “They believe that a nonprofit doesn’t qualify (for a property tax exemption) if it charges fees for its services, which is simply not true.”

The Chalfonte Foundation, whose mission is to end child poverty and promote child well-being, is working to bring programming beyond film screenings to the Elk Rapids Cinema, including a new FM community radio station in the building’s basement and broadcasts of “The HIP Show,” a soon-to-be-launched morning show featuring entertainment and education for children.

The township’s tax assessor, Karleen Sempert, declined to comment on the tax dispute and described the Chalfonte Foundation’s appeal before the Michigan Tax Tribunal as “active litigation.”

Today marks the 101st day since Traverse City’s Bijou by the Bay went dark. The theater has been closed since May 16, when a performance of Planet of the Apes: Kingdom due to a “technical issue.” The Facebook account shared by the Bijou and Traverse City State Theater later reported that it was an issue with the theater’s projector. There have been no posts about the matter since May 23, and the Bijou has not yet reopened.

Representatives of the Traverse City Film Festival (TCFF), which operates both cinemas, were not forthcoming about the reasons for the long closure of the Bijou. At the end of June The Ticker reported that Traverse City Light & Power had posted a hold notice on the theater’s door, indicating an outstanding balance of $940.12. When asked about the notice, Angie Forton, general manager of State and Bijou, The Ticker Screenshots of TCFF’s accounts at TCLP, which showed that Bijou’s outstanding invoice had recently been paid. However, in the same email, Forton failed to answer questions The Ticker had commented on the status of the Bijou or plans for its reopening. TCFF founder Michael Moore also did not respond to requests for comment for this story, nor for this story.

While the State Theatre is owned by the TCFF, the Bijou by the Bay building is owned by the City of Traverse City, which signed a 10-year lease extension with the TCFF in 2021. Under that agreement, the city requires the TCFF to “maintain a minimum schedule of at least one film screening per day for at least 200 days per year.”

City Attorney Lauren Trible-Laucht says city leaders are also in the dark about what is going on with the gem.

“We also tried to contact the TCFF this summer, without success,” says Trible-Laucht. The Tickerand added that she expects the issue “to be the subject of discussion in the (city) commission in the near future.”

Despite the Bijou’s closure, TCFF has continued to operate the State Theatre, continuing the theatre’s “TCFF Tuesdays” film series and showing Hollywood classics every weekend. However, it has not been business as usual: Despite last summer’s popular slate of new films such as Barbie And Oppenheimer – Moore said The Ticker in December that Barbie was “our highest-grossing film of all time” – the state has only shown one new release in the last two months: the romantic comedy with Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johannson Fly with me to the moon.

And summer plans that Forton or Moore had previously discussed appear to have fallen by the wayside: In emails in June, Forton hinted that the TCFF was “planning a mini-fest in late July showcasing ‘the best of the fest,'” but that never happened.

In April, Moore told the audience at the opening performance of TCFF Tuesdays’ spring season that TCFF was preparing for a major effort to preserve theater in the state this summer.

“The canopy (of the State Theater) will be 75 years old this summer,” Moore said. “If I could take you up on a ladder and show you how rusty this thing is and how many times we’ve had to call people in to fix this or that or whatever. They all tell us we have to tear (the canopy) down and put a bright digital LED on. We’re not doing that. This theater is a historic landmark. We’re going to apply for that status this year at both the national and state levels. I want to make sure that long after we’re all gone, nobody tampers with it and it has to maintain its 1940s Art Deco design.”

Moore went on to say that the bid to restore the canopy is $89,000 and he is currently “looking for someone to finance it.”