Josh Brodesky: Bisbee approves Rialto-like spot

"It's scary, but we just feel compelled to do it," Biggers told me. "We just bought it, and we are going to turn it into a music venue, micro-cinema gathering spot."

This venture is not connected to the Rialto Theatre, but there will be some parallels.

Biggers wants to use the space, which he said cost $351,000, to showcase Southern Arizona musicians and artists in a more intimate setting. In recent years, it had been used as a performance space, and he sees potential to provide a cultural venue for Bisbee's roughly 6,000 residents, while also boosting Bisbee's image as a weekend getaway for Tucsonans. It will accommodate at least 260 people and maybe more than 400.

Via email, he said he would like to use the venue to revive the Bisbee Poetry Festival.

"It's just an example of the kinds of things I'd like to have emanate from this venue," he wrote.

Will there be noise?

"It's in a canyon, and that noise bounces from one side of that canyon to the other side to the other side and to the other side," said city Councilwoman Luche Giacomino, who voted against it. "If they would cut the hours. You know, seven days a week until 2 o'clock in the morning is a bit much."

The former church and soon-to-be bar is right in the heart of things with homes right behind it and night life down the street.

"What people have to realize here is when you are mixed-use like this, and your house sits right on the commercial district, that's kind of what you get," said Ken Budge, a Bisbee city councilman who voted for the liquor license.

When the license was up for discussion last week, Budge said some neighbors were painting the loudest picture possible, while Biggers was presenting the quietest.

"I pretty well feel it will probably end up somewhere in between," he said.

Besides, as he sees it, this is a seldom-used building being put to good use. The council recently changed its parking code to help make transformations like this possible. The venue will only add to Bisbee's rep as a cowboy-hipster-hippie-yuppie-bohemian-artsy hangout.

The recession has spread far and wide in Arizona, and Bisbee hasn't been totally insulated, said City Manager Stephen Pauken. Sales tax has stayed relatively strong, but the town has taken a huge hit in its bed tax.

Pauken said he hopes Biggers' new venture will help fill those beds. In a town where the opening of an Ace Hardware store last year was economic development, this venue and its roughly 18 employees means something.

"It may even give a shot in the arm for the lodging industry, which has been suffering for the last couple of years pretty badly," he said.

Let's hope so.

For Biggers, this is about energizing Old Bisbee (even if it means deafening noise to some old Bisbee residents), a town he and his wife fell in love with a little more than a year ago while visiting a friend. They loved it so much they bought a house there - he calls it "a shack" - for weekend getaways. And now he wants to contribute.

"We went down with our kids," he said. "We just got sucked in like a vortex."

The old church dates to about 1914, Biggers said, and, although it's in good shape, there is a fair amount of work to do. The outside will be repainted. The bathrooms need to be remodeled. There is a full kitchen that could potentially be used for a restaurant.

To put it all together, Biggers and his partner, Sloane Bouchever, are leaning on longtime Bisbee residents Shawnee Hicks and Cedric Koloseus.

The vision is there and ready to become a reality. There's just one key piece missing.

"I just wish I had a name" for it, Biggers said.

He's open to suggestions.

Contact columnist Josh Brodesky at 573-4242 or jbrodesky@azstarnet.com