Things are starting to happen again with the Odeum. But the action isn’t occurring on the stage of the former Main Street theater, or in terms of improvements to the infrastructure of the old building.

The impetus is coming from the  town tax assessor’s office, which has decided to start again charging the now-defunct theater property taxes.

“We kept them exempt as long as we could,” said East Greenwich Tax Assessor Janice Peixinho. “We looked away for a whole year.”

The Odeum Corporation, a non-profit group formed in 1993 to open the former long-time Main Street movie house as a downtown performance center, was exempt from paying property taxes in accordance with a resolution passed by the state legislature in 1993. But in 2007, the theater closed because it needed a sprinkler system to meet new state fire code regulations.

In February of this year, Peixinho sent the Odeum Corporation a letter indicating that the town no longer recognized the theater’s tax exempt status because it was no longer operating as a theater.

“According to my records,” she wrote in her letter, “the Odeum Corp. has been closed throughout the year of 2008 and because of this I am required to place the property back on the tax roll for the tax year 2009 as taxable property.”

The property is assessed at $1.1 million and the town is owed $21,000 in property taxes.

Steve Erinakes, whose family owned the property since the early 1950’s and ran it as the Greenwich Theater until 1990, has asked to be put on the East Greenwich Town Council agenda for next Monday night’s meeting so that he can discuss the tax bill with the council.

He has met with Town Manager William Sequino about the matter during the summer. In June Erinakes sent Sequino a letter that said, “By putting the Greenwich Odeum back on the tax roll at this time would force me to make a final decision that may not be in the best interest for the town nor the Odeum.”

Erinakes told My02818 that he would consider selling the property, or turning it into something other than a theater, if it becomes a bigger financial burden. He wouldn’t say what he thinks the building is worth in today’s real estate market.

Confusing the issue is that fact that the Erinakes family has already sold the building. In December of 1991, according to a mortgage deed, Blanch Erinakes sold the property to the Odeum Corporation for $500,000. However, Steve Erinakes holds the mortgage, according Odeum Corp. President Frank Prosnitz, and the organization has never paid Erinakes any money for the property though some of it “has been written off for tax purposes,” Prosnitz said.

At the same time, at least two community groups – the Academy Players and Fantasy Works – have both expressed an interest in making the theater operational again.

And the Downtown Planning Initiative, a group of residents appointed by the town Planning Board to focus on downtown planning and improvements, has identified saving the Odeum as “our number one priority,” according to Chairman Doug Truesdell.

“We’re looking at ways to help, but we don’t yet know how to do that,” he said.

According to Prosnitz, and almost everyone else even at least a little bit familiar with the situation with the Odeum, the main thing that is needed is money.

In order to meet fire code, the building would need a new sprinkler system, which was estimated to cost $200,000 in 2007. Prosnitz said the theater has also developed a significant mold problem since it closed, which will be expensive to remove. Just to make the theater operational again could cost between $500,000 and $1 million, he said.

“If we want to make it viable it’s all about dollars,” Prosnitz said.

Erinakes – whose family used to own all three movie venues in town: the Greenwich Theater, the Kent Theater, where Centerville Bank now is, and the Hill top Drive In, where St. Elizabeth’s Home is now – said his first choice is to keep the building as an operational theater of some sort. He said he would be willing to talk to any group that wants to try.

“It needs that next generation of enthusiasts,” Erinakes said.