The Sedona International Film Festival may be returning home to the former Sedona Cultural Park.

The prospect opened up beginning about three weeks ago, when SIFF Executive Director Patrick Schweiss began shopping around for a new site for the festival’s theatres.

Schweiss explained that the festival’s long-term plan had always been to buy the West Sedona building that houses its Mary D. Fisher and Alice Gill-Sheldon Theatres, on which SIFF holds first right of refusal, but that the price the property’s owner is currently asking is double the appraised value.

“A couple of people on our committee — we call it our futures committee, that’s investigating what does the future of the film festival look like,” asked why SIFF is retrofitting an older building instead of just building its dream theatres on land SIFF owns, Schweiss said.

“I was kind of fighting them on it for a while, going, we can’t give up our theatres, we’re too attached to these. And then, this was like, I can become unattached if it’s going to mean that kind of price tag.”

“For that amount, we can find a new plot of land and build from scratch and create the building we want,” Schweiss added. He drove up and down State Route 89A looking for available properties.

“We love being in West Sedona, we love being on the highway,” Schweiss said. “For the sake of the film festival, it makes sense because of using the [Sedona] Performing Arts Center and the VIP lounge.”

Eventually, he called Northern Arizona Healthcare to inquire about its future plans for vacant property adjoining the Sedona Emergency Room, which led to a call to City Hall about whether the city had any plans to pursue a land exchange with NAH.

“That’s what prompted me to call the mayor,” Schweiss said, who he said suggested SIFF as an anchor tenant at the Cultural Park.

Schweiss and his committee members then met with Mayor Scott Jablow, Vice Mayor Holli Ploog and City Manager Anette Spickard to discuss the proposed new master plan, which led Schweiss to zero in on the areas of the plan identified as blocks 6 and 7, straddling the secondary entrance to the Cultural Park along SR 89A, that were designated in the plan for mixed-use development.

SIFF would build out that area as commercial space and be the developer, Schweiss said. The process would still have to be approved by the Planning and Zoning Commission and Sedona City Council.

“As the city manager I am glad that Mr. Schweiss and his board came to us to share their vision for SIFF’s future at this site,” Spickard said. “I’m excited to work with them. I hope their interest in working with us sparks the community to join us in making this new mixed-use neighborhood a vibrant and special place.”

Schweiss next appeared at the Sedona Planning and Zoning Commission’s April 15 work session on the proposed plan for the park to pitch the idea of reserving the mixed-use space for SIFF.

“There is interest in fast-tracking us on this,” Schweiss said with regard to the conversations he has so far had with city staff. “From what we’ve been told from the city people, ours would be the fastest and easiest to develop, because while we’re doing that, they can work on the rest of the property.”

The two blocks of the property in which the festival is interested cover 3.4 acres, and Schweiss was hoping to meet with Yavapai College officials in the near future to discuss possible partnership opportunities with the adjoining Sedona Center. The proposed film festival campus is tentatively being referred to as the Sedona Cinema Arts Center, and SIFF would be the sole tenant of this area, rather than restaurants, shops or other businesses.

“We really want to just duplicate our theatres, add a 250- to 300-seat performance venue, because that’s the size that’s missing in this town. A lot of people can’t fill up the Performing Arts Center,” Schweiss said. “For those events where you attract 200, 250, 300 people, it makes more sense to go into a [smaller] venue. There’s something incredibly significant and almost subliminal about going into a place where you’re in a 250-seat theatre and it’s sold out, as opposed to 250 in the performing arts center, and it looks like, wow, there’s not a lot of people here. It’s a mindset.”

Schweiss said the new spaces could retain the Mary D. Fisher Theatre and Alice Gill-Sheldon Theatre names “and then add this other live performance venue that fits the need of a size we don’t have in Sedona.”

Audience sizes in Sedona have fallen since 40 years ago, when 3,000 Sedona Jazz on the Rocks attendees packed into Poco Diablo Resort to hear Henry Mancini perform, but Schweiss expressed hope that having a live theatre capable of providing consistent high-quality productions will help rebuild attendance.

Schweiss said that SIFF would prefer to have a “very long-term lease” for the land, with the city retaining ownership, while the live venue would be modeled after the Musical Instrument Museum theatre in Phoenix.

“It’s probably the best sound of all the venues in Arizona,” Schweiss said. “We want to be able to equip it right away with the proper sound engineering and the proper audience experience, so it doesn’t have to be retrofitted.”

SIFF currently plans to work with Grammy-winning songwriter Gardner Cole, who helped design the sound system at the MIM and has also suggested incorporating a few filmmaking facilities, including an editing bay, green screen room and mixing room, into the design.

“We would like to entertain partnering with MIM, and if we can book one of their acts on the day after they perform down there, it’ll be economical for them, for us, and the act picks up an extra gig,” Schweiss explained. “We would have that same concept with other performing arts venues in the state.”

“If we could make it work enough on the land, we could add a fourth theatre at 150 seats, and we would have all the venues,” Schweiss said. “We would have the entire festival taking place over a two-block radius, thereby keeping all traffic out there.”

Schweiss was optimistic that given the infrastructure in place at the park, SIFF could break ground in two years and open the new location in three, depending on the speed of permitting, design work and fundraising. SIFF’s architect, John Sather, previously worked for Mike Tennyson, the former owner of the Cultural Park, on concepts for the property and is familiar with the location.

“What I loved about this piece was that no matter what happens back here, it doesn’t affect us,” Schweiss said while looking at the proposed site plan. “If someday the Cultural Park 2.0 people get their dream and [the amphitheater] stays, we have a whole cultural area. We have a whole entertainment district. It doesn’t affect us. We would welcome them. If the city has no interest in that and the community has no interest in that and this becomes a neighborhood, we would welcome that, too.”

“We really feel this is the right direction for our future to create something that will be state-of-the-art, keep up with the technology advances and provide something for everybody here in Sedona, all the other nonprofit groups that need venue space,” Schweiss said. “This is coming home to us. We were a product of the Sedona Cultural Park.”

“Imagine this,” Schweiss added. “We build out there. Coming in from west of town, you experience culture first. Coming in from the [Oak Creek] Canyon, it’s the [Sedona] Arts Center. We are literally bookended by culture on that road. That is an absolutely incredible and inspiring concept.”