Inside an 86-year-old movie theater in downtown Juneau, a group of film lovers sifted through decades of debris in a dusty room behind the big screen.
There were a couple of generations of theater seats in various states of deconstruction and decay. Red rolls of tickets and an ancient cash register sat on shelves. And, hanging from the ceiling was the top half of an old, art-deco stage arch.
“So right here, this is the proscenium, and that was the original to the original building,” said James McSweeney, who is renovating the old theater with his wife. “And we expect to restore this and build back the legs of it, and regild it, and then this would be a performance space.”
McSweeney said the building is full of history.
“It’s really cool that it’s all still here, and, yeah, we’d like to just bring it all back to life.”
The Gross 20th Century Theater on Front Street was built in 1940. The Gross family owned and operated it, alongside a movie theater in the Mendenhall Valley. But during the pandemic, the downtown theater closed and never reopened.
In 2024, the Juneau Assembly approved a $1.1 million loan from Juneau’s Affordable Housing Fund to the new owners of the building, Juneau-based BroKo Holdings LLC. The company plans to turn the upper floors into housing.
Then, last fall, McSweeney and his wife decided to take a leap — they started renting the old theater space in the building with the hopes of reopening it. Before this venture, the couple worked on Alaska Marine Highway System ferries for about a decade.
“Ten years of that made me feel really apart from the community,” he said. “And I’ve always wanted to be in the community. At my first opportunity, (I) jumped in.”
McSweeney said the theater will be called Aurora Grand. It’s a name they plan to grow into.
“Calling ourselves grand is kind of what our aspiration will be,” he said. “And we’re gonna start off pretty modest, and then we’re gonna, like, ramp up, hopefully over the next few years.”
He wants to restore the theater’s old school aesthetic with Hollywood regency and art deco. Part of that plan is taking down the drop ceiling and restoring the chandelier that’s been hidden for decades. McSweeny also wants to bring back the marquee on the outside of the theater that would advertise events and movies.
The theater originally had one large stage, and put on live productions from the 1940s to the ‘70s. Then, it primarily showed films, and in the ‘80s, the balcony seating area upstairs was turned into a separate auditorium.
McSweeney’s wife, Emelia Sween, has been helping with the renovation. She said they plan to restore both auditoriums. The team is building a stage in the upper theater, as well as restoring the original stage downstairs, to bring back plays and other live performances by Juneau organizations.
“We want to be able to show movies that are made by people in town, documentaries, student films,” she said. “Host it all so that everybody feels like this is a part of their home and part of their space.”
That’s the mission behind the theater — creating spaces for youth to hang out, work the ticket booth, learn about films and present their own.
X’adasteen Connor Meyer is a videographer who is helping McSweeney document the theater’s transformation.
“I grew up in Yakutat, and we didn’t have a third space, and so having this as an opportunity to really foster arts in a way that’s not seen here in Southeast Alaska in this way at this scale is really, really exciting,” he said.
Meyer said he wishes he had the chance as a young person to engage with film and creativity in the way the Aurora Grand hopes to foster.
“To have this when I was a kid, it would have changed my trajectory,” he said. “I wouldn’t have gone through some of the stuff I went through to find myself. So hopefully this space fosters the ability for youth to find themselves in their arts a little bit quicker.”
And McSweeney said he’s excited to keep up the theater’s tradition of being part of the fabric of Juneau’s community, for residents young and old, into the years to come.
“Since we’ve opened the doors to the community, I’ve been talking to so many people to hear all the memories that have already taken place in the space,” he said. “We’re just going to continue with that same energy, hopefully even more intensified, so we can have more and more awesome memories for people.”
McSweeney plans to open the theater in late May.
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