Morro Bay movie theater is for sale after COVID closure — and it’s in ‘fabulous shape’
Morro Bay’s only movie theater is for sale for $1.5 million, according to a commercial real estate listing.
Bay Theatre, located at 464 Morro Bay Blvd., features a single-screen theater as well as an office and an apartment with one bedroom and one bathroom. There’s also a garage.
According to Farrell Smyth, the San Luis Obispo realty company that listed the sale, the 900-square foot commercial property “in the heart of Morro Bay” is “in fabulous shape and ready for many uses.”
Longtime Bay Theatre owner Mary Lou Jannopoulos, now in her 80s, said that it was time for her to let go of the family business.
“We had it for a long time, and it has been a wonderful life for me and family, but everything has a beginning and an end,” Jannopoulos said.
Jannopoulos said theaters have been hit particularly hard by the impact of COVID-19 on the movie industry and studios taking larger shares of ticket sale percentages.
“Studios now are wanting 65% of gross receipts, which makes it very hard for theater to cover their costs,” Jannopoulos said. “When we first had the theater in the 1970s, it was around 35%.”
Local movie theaters collectively closed their doors in March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Those businesses were allowed to open indoors at 25% capacity that September, when San Luis Obispo County moved into the red tier of COVID-19 restrictions under California’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy. But when the county slipped back into the stricter purple tier in November, only modified outdoor movie theater operations were allowed.
California’s regional stay-at-home order for Southern California, including San Luis Obispo County, also prevented indoor movie theaters from operating. That order went into place on Dec. 6, 2020, and was lifted in January.
San Luis Obispo County remained in the purple tier as of Monday.
History of Morro Bay movie theater
The Bay Theatre building was constructed by the U.S. military in 1942 by the military to serve seamen based in Morro Bay, according to a 2011 Tribune article.
The Bay Theatre has been family-owned and operated since 1975, when Jannopoulos and her then-husband, Jim, took over the business while living in Westlake. They hired a manager, who lived in the apartment in San Luis Obispo.
The family later moved to San Luis Obispo County and the Bay Theatre became the family business. Mary Lou Jannopoulos said her son Brian maintained the facility, while his wife, Denise, was an accountant who managed daily operations.
Mary Lou Jannopoulos’s grandchildren, Randy and Heather, were also on staff.
Jannopolous said the Bay Theatre screened a variety of quality films, avoiding the horror genre. She also skipped kids’ films because of concerns about the mess children made and concerns that they would run up and down the aisles and risk hurting themselves, she said.
Over more than three decades, the Jannopouloses upgraded nearly the entire building, transforming a venue that was once called “the pit” for its state of deterioration and sticky floors.
They made a steady series of building improvements — exposing the original trussed roof, which some say resembles the framing of a boat, and installing new seats and new decorative tiling in the entryway.
“We selected the most comfortable chairs for anyone tall, thin, short, fat,” Mary Lou Jannopoulos said. “And they were expensive.”
The family also replaced the carpets, redecorated the lobby, expanded the bathrooms and converted the theater to digital projection.
The most recent improvement to the building was “the installation of a state-of-the-art digital projection and sound system,” the website states.
“It’s now a wonderful, turnkey building, that’s modernized and ready to go,” Jannopolous told The Tribune.
Bay Theatre closes due to due to coronavirus
In the spring of 2020, the Bay Theatre announced that it was shuttering due to coronavirus.
“Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are sad to announce the closing of the Bay Theatre beginning Friday, March 20th until further notice,” the business posted on Facebook. “We will re-open when it is safe to do so. Thank you for your patronage and looking forward to seeing you at the movies again.”
Former Morro Bay Mayor Janice Peters said that she is among many community members who hope the Bay Theatre will remain operational under a new owner.
“When I first moved to Morro Bay from Los Angeles, it was because the city had a movie theater,” Peters told The Tribune on Tuesday. “I couldn’t imagine life without one.”
Peters said that she’d always hoped to line up a conference facility in Morro Bay, and thought the 314-seat Bay Theatre might double as a meeting space. But the city can’t afford to buy it, she said.
“The city doesn’t have the money even though we’ve long needed a conference center,” Peters said. “And I know many people have talked about raising money to save the theater, but even if we can, then the issue would be getting movies in and making sure it’s earning enough to keep.”
Jannopolous said studios nowadays often want four-week runs on films, which is a challenge for a small town where audiences want to see new movies regularly.
She also said people tend to stream movies at home, as opposed to watching them on the big screen.
“I always loved the feeling of being at the movies, the smell of the popcorn, the people around you, and how you feel like you’re in the picture,” Jannopolous said. “Netflix at home isn’t the same.”
On Facebook, San Luis Obispo resident Sarah Flickinger said she hopes the Bay Theatre will find a good buyer.
“I sincerely hope someone amazing buys it and keeps running it in the same manner,” she wrote. “The Bay has always been the best local theater, (in my humble opinion).”
This story was originally published January 26, 2021 at 8:56 AM.
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