WSU President Betsy Cantwell talked about potential plans for the defunct movie theater on Southeast Bishop Boulevard and spoke on upcoming budget cuts during a recent interview.
Cantwell said she wants to revamp the old movie theater that closed last year.
“I’ve been in college towns that have old movie theaters that are flea markets two days a week, that are dinner theaters two days a week where there’s a restaurant that caters it, and you watch the movie,” she said. “[We] have figured out a suite of uses that make it revenue even, and we just haven’t sat down and thought about that.”
Cantwell said she has spoken to the owner of the movie theater about this.
“I think the owner, that’s not his thing,” Cantwell said. “We need to take that approach … there’s a lot of spaces down there that are either underutilized or haven’t been fixed up for a really long time.”
Another idea Cantwell had was for some of the university departments to utilize the space.
“I mean, if you look at even just the different departments we have, we’d say, alright, hospitality, figure out something to do two nights a week, and engineering figure out something to do, maybe turn it into a maker space.”
Cantwell ruled out the university buying the space, instead saying they would partner with the owners.
“We would probably figure out how to have partnerships with owners so that their property was revenue-generating for them,” Cantwell said. “I just think that’s the kind of place that a student body can have a lot more fun and a wide variety of interesting things to do. It’s not on campus.”
Cantwell spoke about budget cuts to the university.
“The process of cutting budget isn’t one where you just sort of slash and burn,” she said. “How do we get the job done with less?”
She talked about the ‘design process’ which would help the university adapt to changing times.
“We’ve got expenditures that we can’t tolerate anymore. We’ve got athletics. We’re taking a deep breath,” Cantwell said. “We’re going to kick off what we’re calling a design process, a system design process soon, very soon I think probably letters will go out, maybe in the next two or three weeks.”
There are two questions at the center of this Cantwell said.
“It’s really answering kind of two questions. One: the world’s changing really fast. How do we optimize our chances to design our own future, instead of having it imposed on us?” She said. “Thing two is where, in a decade, how do we need to be serving students?”
The process would involve community input, Cantwell said.
“It will really involve a lot of input from the various elements of our communities. So in our campuses, out and about the state, we’ll be asking those regents, what do you guys need from us? Like, what do you actually need from us, as opposed to let’s reproduce the Pullman campus everywhere.”
WSU announced in June that university departments would have to prepare for budget cuts and layoffs. These cuts stem from a $17 million reduction in the university budget due to state and federal budget cuts.
These cuts have already started to impact the university, with Design and Printing Services being shut down at the end of October.
