Majestic Bay to mark 25 years with screening and documentary about its history

The Majestic Bay will close out its 25th year with a screening of Singin’ in the Rain on Monday, Oct. 12. The film was among those playing when the Ballard theater opened in October 2000.

The 6:30 p.m. event will also include a 30-minute documentary made by general manager Jesse Mercury Plack. Plack told My Ballard he spent the past year creating the film, which tells the story of how the Majestic Bay came to be and explores the history of the site, where a theater has operated since 1914.

Free tickets were claimed within a few hours of their release, Plack said. The theater is keeping a waitlist in case seats become available.

The Majestic Bay’s history stretches well beyond its current name. A single-screen theater called the Majestic Theatre first opened at the site in 1914. After that theater closed, the space reopened as the Roxy Theatre in 1929. It became the Bay Theatre in 1948.

Kenny Alhadeff knew the theater long before he owned it. As a child, he paid 25 cents to see movies there when it was known as the American Theater. Decades later, a friend told him about the aging Bay Theatre on NW Market Street. Alhadeff bought it in 1998, and he and his wife, Marleen, set out to rebuild it.

The project cost about $5 million. Seattle artists contributed to the new theater, while Marleen Alhadeff helped shape its interior design. The resulting Majestic Bay retained a connection to the site’s moviegoing past while bringing a new building and screening rooms to Ballard.

That history is visible inside the theater today. Its walls display vintage movie posters and historical photos of the building. Details in the screening rooms draw on Ballard’s maritime history, including deep blue curtains, dark wood railings, and gold dock cleats that hold the curtains. A waterfall curtain rises and falls before films begin.

Plack, who is also the Alhadeffs’ son-in-law, has helped introduce retro film nights at the Majestic Bay since September 2024. Those screenings have brought older films, including The Matrix and A Nightmare on Elm Street, back to the theater’s screens.

The anniversary screening returns to one of the films audiences could see at the Majestic Bay’s opening. Plack’s documentary will look further back, covering the succession of theaters that occupied the site before the Alhadeffs rebuilt it.

“Over 25 years ago, my wife and I found out that this historic theater was closed and hadn’t had movies for quite a while. And we felt that a neighborhood movie theater would be an exciting thing for Ballard,” Kenny Alhadeff said in a video about the Majestic Bay. “And early on, it became the goal to try to make it the finest neighborhood theater in America.”

Photo: Majestic Bay