Bar Harbor’s 1932 Criterion Theatre Reopens With Non-Profit Ownership, $1M Pledge

Bar Harbor, Maine’s Criterion Theatre, a historic 750-capacity art deco palace, originally built by a bootlegger in 1932 after being released from prison, hosted its grand reopening concert on July 5 with The Mother Hips and Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter Leslie Mendelson. This comes after a $1 million pledge for operational, programming, and preservation suppor tled by the new venue’s owner, the non-profit Harper House Music Foundation, a public charity focused on supporting music communities and arts education established by local summer residents Stephen and Allison Sullens.

HHMF will also seed the “Criterion Theatre Preservation Fund,” established in conjunction with the Maine Community Foundation, to funnel donations to support the iconic venue and other local music initiatives.

The reopened venue is hosting a slate of top-notch shows this summer into the fall, featuring a combination of musical and comedy acts, including David Sedaris (July 12), Lucious (July 24), SNL veteran Colin Quinn (July 26), The Mountain Goats and Craig Finn (August 12), Grammy winning mandolin player and singer/songwriter Chris Thile (Aug. 16), Asleep at the Wheel (Aug. 27), reggae dancehall legend Barrington Levy (August 28), Livingston Taylor (September 13) and Steve Earle (October 11).

The venue, which has been shuttered since a Wallflowers show last summer, will continue to be booked by independent contractor Jason Legassie, whose day job is working for regional promoter MassConcerts based out of Worcester, MA.

Stephen Sullens, who was a partner at global investment firm Blackstone Group for 25 years before retiring last December, started the Harper House Music Foundation with his wife Allison last March. The two have lived part-time for the past 17 years on Maine’s Mount Desert Island, which boasts a year-round population of 10,000 that swells to 40,000 in the summer, alongside an estimated 3.5 million tourists who visit the popular Acadia National Park.

One of just two remaining art deco theaters in Maine, the Criterion still maintains its original auditorium and floating balcony, with a Green Room that was once a speakeasy. The theater saw a $2 million renovation in 2012 provided by an unnamed local. This latest investment helps assure the venue’s future as a vibrant, community-centered home for live entertainment and performing arts for years to come.

“This is really the first opportunity for this theater to operate in all its original glory,” said Allison. “Without it, this community had no access to art, music and culture.”

“The previous ownership never found a way to reach the amount of people who come here during the summer,” added Stephen, who will continue to run the theater as a non-profit through the couple’s foundation. “We didn’t start booking acts until April, and now we’ve lined up 26 shows.”

The venue will continue to operate as a movie theater – it hosted a first run showing of King Kong in 1933 – with a slate that includes a variety of classic and contemporary films, among them, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Mamma Mia! and music docs Becoming Led Zeppelin and Stop Making Sense, among others.

In addition to the operational, programming and preservation support provided to the Criterion Theater, the Sullens’ Harper House Music Foundation serves as a conduit between many of Stephen’s former hedge fund clients and non-profit music groups, especially during last winter’s Los Angeles fires, contributing to such music philanthropic organizations as Backline, Sweet Relief and Newport Festivals Foundation.

Stephen serves on the board of the Americana Music Foundation, the charitable arm of good friend Jed Hilly’s Americana Music Association and is President of the advisory board for American Song Archives, which oversees both the Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie Center Archives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. (Dylan is scheduled to play nearby Bangor’s Maine Savings Amphitheater on Sept. 5).

“The goal is not to make money, but to have the venue sustain itself,” explains California-native Stephen. “We feel there are plenty of opportunities here to grow the audience. This is a very personal project for both of us. In many ways, I’m busier than I was at Blackstone… Just don’t tell my former partners that.”