Nearly 180 days after closing the Bijou by the Bay due to projector issues, the Traverse City Film Festival (TCFF) has announced that the theater will not reopen. Additionally, TCFF Founder Michael Moore shared in an email Friday that the TCFF Board of Directors is recommending that the City of Traverse City transfer “stewardship” of the building to the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians (GTB), to be used as “a Native American cultural space.”

The Bijou has been closed since Thursday, May 16, when TCFF cancelled a showing of the film Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes due to a “technical issue.” Additional showtimes were pulled for that weekend and the following week, with TCFF noting on Facebook that the problems had to do with the theater’s projector. The Bijou never reopened, and TCFF shared no further information on the matter, either publicly or in response to ongoing inquiries from The Ticker. The most recent of those inquiries occurred last week, with no comment from Moore or other TCFF representatives.

“Since our projection booth meltdown at the Bijou cinema at the beginning of the summer, followed by being forced to close due to the summer-long construction of a new Grandview Parkway, plus the state of the movie business in general these days, operating our smaller theater, the Bijou, has become cost-prohibitive,” Moore wrote in an email to TCFF newsletter subscribers Friday afternoon. Because of these issues, TCFF will be “returning the Bijou building to the city,” which owns the structure and has leased it to TCFF since 2013. TCFF’s current lease runs through July 2033.

Also included in Moore’s email is the full text of a letter to the Traverse City City Commission, “giving notice” about the lease termination and proposing that the building be given to the GTB.

“We here at the Traverse City Film Festival would like to see our beloved local Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, with your approval, take over the stewardship of the Clinch Park building and provide a Native American cultural space to be used for the greater good of our entire community,” Moore wrote. “Music, film, plays, gatherings, and uses by clubs and organizations in support of the Tribe’s values as it relates to our Earth, Democracy, the Arts and the preservation of our heritage and good will to all.”

Traverse City officials bristled at the idea that Moore or TCFF would try to go around the city in talking to a potential future tenant.

“The Bijou is the property of the City of Traverse City and its citizens; it’s not Michael Moore’s property,” Mayor Amy Shamroe tells The Ticker. “They have a contract with us that, frankly, they've been in violation of for several years now. It is in no way, shape, or form Michael Moore's or the Film Festival’s decision to decide how to move forward.”

Among other requirements, TCFF’s lease with the city requires that the Bijou “maintain a minimum program of at least one film showing per day for at least 200 days per year.” The Bijou has fallen short of that requirement several times in recent years, including in 2024.

Shamroe adds that the city has a strong relationship with the GTB and its tribal council and would be more than happy to consider any interest the Tribe has in using the Bijou building. However, she stresses that the process for deciding what’s next for the space will need to be more formal than simply letting an outgoing tenant handpick the next occupant.

“For us to go ahead and not do an RFP (request for proposal) – or something similar – to see what community groups are interested in that space would be completely irresponsible for us as a city,” Shamroe says.

Mayor Pro Tem Mark Wilson, a GTB member who formerly served on the tribal council, acknowledges that there have been preliminary discussions within the Tribe about the Bijou, but nothing concrete. GTB, he says “can't and won't make any comment, as far as I know, until it's an actual possibility." He also concurred with Shamroe about the need for a formal approach, noting, “there's a process that has to be followed with any possible tenant drafting a proposal for the use of that space. It needs to be official.”

Nevertheless, Wilson does like Moore’s idea.

“I think it'd be a beautiful thing,” he says. “It would only improve on the cultural richness of our area and the history of our region.”

Beyond Moore’s procedural faux-pas, City Manager Liz Vogel and City Attorney Lauren Trible-Laucht say TCFF has not been forthright with city leadership about the situation at the Bijou. It wasn’t until late September that the pair had a sit-down with Moore, even though the city “had been trying to get ahold of the film festival for a while with no luck,” per Trible-Laucht.

“Then Michael asked for a meeting, and was not very specific about the content of the meeting,” Trible-Laucht says. “We sat down September 23, and he invited representatives from the Tribe to be there. He said, ‘We're not able to fulfill this contract anymore, and we think it'd be a good thing if the Tribe could do something with the building.’ We said, ‘We understand if you can't fulfill the contract. We can mutually terminate the contract and figure out how to wind up that relationship. If the Tribe is interested in having a role in that building, they are free to provide some type of proposal to the city.’”

According to Trible-Laucht, the September 23 meeting ended with the understanding that TCFF “would get us something in writing about not being able to fulfill the contract, and we'd take it from there.”

But Vogel says the city “never received any formal communication [from TCFF] after the September meeting” until Friday morning, when she received Moore’s letter and forwarded it to the city commission. “We have some letters from the Tribe saying they're interested in the space, but they've been very careful in their communications,” she adds.

Going forward, Trible-Laucht says the city will work with TCFF to mutually terminate the lease agreement, which would involve spelling out termination terms and a specific vacate date for TCFF. City commissioners would then need to approve that document, after which the commission would likely hold a study session to review options for the Bijou.

Beyond the GTB, Trible-Laucht shares that the city has already been contacted by multiple other interested parties about the Bijou space.

Beth Milligan contributed to this report.