Mack Theater

05/07/2025

06/26/2023

03/11/2023

Thinking caps on and plans under way. 🙌

We’ve been taking a deep dive these last few weeks with our architecture team, fully exploring all the nuance of these buildings and developing several alternate options within our plans that integrate our historic preservation goals with the programmatic needs of these spaces.

Next up we’ll work with our contractor to price check our various options, ensuring that we move forward with a solid understanding of the benefits and constraints associated with each approach. It’s a methodical and thoughtful process, but one that will ultimately ensure we are on the right path as we enter the next phases of design.

There’s a balancing act in decisions like integrating the elevator into the historic building or incorporating it in the adjacent building; in adding the requisite bathrooms on the main level, or creating a basement to accommodate them. There are functional considerations, programmatic considerations…and always BUDGET considerations. But at the end of the day, we know we’ll weigh all our options and strike the cord that best meets our objective to bring these buildings back to life in our community. McMinnville’s got a history worth saving and sharing. Bit by bit, we’re getting there!

01/26/2023

We took a little snooze over the holidays, but our team is ready to shift into high gear to move our Mack Theater project into the next phase. We’ve spent the last few weeks getting down to the nitty gritty with our architecture team on all things historic preservation, and we’re so excited about how it’s going! These buildings have been vacant and unusable for decades, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be brought back to life in a way that lifts our community up, celebrates our local history and is financially viable. When it comes to working with historic buildings, it’s all about setting the right goals. When preservation is at the heart of your intentions, you get creative and find the business model that works for the space, rather than asking the space to work for you. We’re so excited about the plans we’ve put together for these historic properties—learn more about our project at www.MackTheater.com and keep following along here for updates!

12/02/2022

These seats have missed having people in them.

12/02/2022

These halls have been lonely for an awful long time. The quiet settles in like a blanket until the sounds from Serendipity’s player piano waft up through the cracks.

12/02/2022

Remember when movies came on film? Perched above the auditorium at the Mack is the projector room, which still has all the original equipment–including three huge plates like the one you see here. The next time there’s a movie at the Mack, the equipment will have to look a little different, but the experience of watching a film in a historic theater will always be a special one. What was the best movie you ever saw at the Mack? You have 60 years of movies to choose from.

12/02/2022

Who doesn’t love a haunted hotel? We don’t know that this one is (or isn’t for that matter) but it certainly feels ghostly. Vacant for just over 50 years now, the Hotel Yamhill has its own story to tell, populated with interesting characters and plenty of trials and tribulations. Our project historian has been a super sleuth, unearthing all sorts of tidbits from the past…but no verified ghosts (yet).