Enterprise's OK Theatre closes

ENTERPRISE — The marquee is blank on the OK Theatre in downtown Enterprise.

The last picture show in that 90-year-old business was shown there Sunday. Owners David and Lori Brandt of Weott, Calif., have decided to close the business and put it up for lease or sale.

“It’s like a Catch-22,” David Brandt said. “I thank the community for its support. I appreciate that. I feel like I’m letting them down on the one hand, yet I don’t have it in me to continue.”

After their daughter, Shelby, 23, died April 21, 2007, the Brandts moved back to the area where he was born and raised, to be near the extended family.

Since then every month they would make the 16-hour drive to live in Enterprise one month managing the theater then returning to live in Weott the next month.

“It has been like going from one life to another. I just don’t have it in me anymore,” David said, adding that in his grieving process he just wasn’t doing the theater justice.

The Brandt family purchased the theater in 2001, when daughter Shelby was a senior in high school.

David was a former member of the Wallowa County Planning Commission and Lori, a member of the Wallowa Valley Health Care Foundation.

The couple originally operated two eldercare businesses in Wallowa County.

Then they phased out of the eldercare business and entered into theater and community events.

“It’s a good, viable business — a cornerstone of the community,” David said. Someone could still make a good living with the building promoting theater and performing arts, he said.

The historic building and business are for sale for $240,000 — a price that includes the theater, two commercial rentals and two residential rentals.

The OK Theatre was opened in 1918 by A. Hackbarth.

It was renamed the Vista Theater in 1933 by Alva and Anna Stockdale.

In 1981 the name reverted to the OK Theatre when Russell Ford purchased it.