Co-owner Claudia Becker announced the closure this week on Instagram, citing staff shortages and the challenges facing “mom and pop businesses like ours.”
“But,” she continued, “we don’t see this as an end, but rather as a new beginning. We are pushing ‘pause’ as we are talking to friends and allies to reinvent a bigger picture for the community.” She envisions the business continuing under collective ownership, such as a co-op or a foundation, she told Seven Days on Friday.
Comments to Becker’s post, studded with heart, praying-hands and crying emojis, flooded in. “Oh no, please noooo. This breaks my heart,” one said. “Thank you for an incredible 20 years of wide-ranging service to our community,” another said. One writer called the Big Picture a “landing pad for my family when we first moved to the valley. As a mom with small children, we were regulars — curled up on the couch reading books, playing card games, and nibbling on grilled cheese.”
Still another paid homage to Big Picture’s Very Small Donut Company, which sells its signature maple-glazed and occasional other varieties at the theater on weekends: “A giant stack of maple donuts was our wedding cake.”
The departure of a key employee was the catalyst for the closure, Becker said, causing her to consider rising costs, the shortage of reliable workers and the lack of affordable housing. Before COVID-19, she said, Big Picture was open morning through evening, seven days a week. Now it is open only for four hours, four nights a week. That’s not what she set out to do, she said: “My mission was to be a community space.”
One of the theater’s two screening rooms is a multipurpose space that’s been used for concerts, dance classes, kids’ programs, winter farmers markets, weddings, funerals and political candidate forums. “It has regular theater seats,” Becker said, “but it also has all these really cozy, comfy furniture pieces … People just lounge on them, bring their food in, have a beer, and the kids run around.”
She and Jarecki remain business partners. Theirs is among a handful of enterprises in Waitsfield that are struggling and closing, she said, adding, “This is an epidemic.” It raises broad questions that she intends to address in a community meeting at the theater in the spring.
“What kind of a town do we want to live in, and what kind of town do we want our kids to live in?” she asked. “What about this trend of all the businesses closing because they can’t meet cost? What about not having affordable housing? What about not having public spaces where we can meet and gather and come together and interact, not just based on our religion or our beliefs, but as a community as a whole?”
The future of Big Picture is part of that. “I’ve been to several community events recently, and obviously at the Big Picture every night,” Becker said. “Every person comes up to me and says, ‘What can we do? We want this to stay. We’re ready to step up.’ So I have high hopes.”
This article appears in Oct 9-15, 2024.
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