FORT BRAGG, CA — Desiree and Terry Ramos, the new owners of Coast Cinemas, officially took over the business about two weeks ago. The retired couple who live in Mendocino are not newcomers in the community. Upon retiring, they left their home in Vacaville and moved to a house in Mendocino they purchased in 2015 with intentions to become involved in community affairs.
It wasn’t long before Terry began volunteer work with the Health Care Foundation board and is now its president. Desiree joined the board of directors for the Mendo Food Network and is now board president. Those two positions quickly gave them an inside view of the community’s culture and opportunities to work in concert with other community leaders in Fort Bragg.
Their commitment to the community then became a family operation. Eventually, their adult daughter, Mary Tinder, came to stay as well and took on the position of Head of Development and Fundraising at the Mendo Food Network, which is now based in Willits.
The idea to buy the Coast Cinemas said Desiree, first arose “in April of 2024, when a friend of mine saw the listing on the listserv and half-jokingly said, “Do it!’” She added, “Terry and I had been talking about moving the last of our investment from Solano County into our area here. Retail and hospitality–not our jam.”
She continued, “Fast forward. A full year later, we came to see the Oscar shorts and had dinner with the same people who sent that email. They mentioned the price had dropped. They begged us, and we started looking into it.”
“We heard at the time that it might close,” she recalled, “and it probably wouldn’t be able to start up again. If it closed, it would be a huge blow to the community. We’re weren’t saviors, but it was important that to preserve this community asset. The timing happened to be right.”
What appealed to her about the property, she said, was “the mid-century modern style, the rustic charm of that rockface. I think it’s an important building in that way to the history of the town.”
Although the couple lacks experience in the theater business, Desiree said, ” We have what we hope is translatable experience. Terry comes from the tech world. He was in cyber-security, and his focus was on contracts, negotiations, relationships, deals, and partnerships. He will be the backend guy here.”
She continued, “I ran a performing arts theatre in Vacaville for almost ten years. I think it’s pretty analogous without the artists but with everything else like booking and promoting on the front end. The technology to show films is digital now, and I’m hoping my skills will still translate.”
Desiree is well aware of the national-wide popularity of streaming but believes even those people “will go to the movies as well.” She said, ” I think there is some segment of the population that recognizes that some movies are better seen with people in a theater, and there are people here in the community who don’t like blockbusters at all but will come to the Film Festival.”
Coast Cinemas, previously owned by the Lazzarini family, has been a local fixture since 1964. What originally was a one screen theater, developed over time into a four screen movie house with 700 seats. Tom and Maxine Lazzarini retired and turned the business over to their daughter Laurie Moore.
When the time came for Moore to retire, the family made the decision to sell. About sixty years of employee history was wrapped up in the memories of the movies that came to town and all the local people who came with a date or an entire family. Generations of employees sold tickets, put up the reels, sold candy and popcorn, and swabbed floors.
It wasn’t unusual for a local teenager, who as a child hung around the movie house during a parent’s work hours, to later work there as a teenager and then become the cinema’s manager, running the business so that the Lazzarinis need not be on site at all hours.
Like many local businesses, during COVID Coast Cinemas suffered through a period of mandated shut down long enough to question if it could survive as public activity returned. According to the Lazzarinis, the post-COVID movie “Barbie” saved them.
The family was one of the lucky ones who were not forced into permanent closure. Desiree Ramos points to Laurie Moore’s stewardship for that. The business survived.
According to Ramos, the current employees and manager will remain on staff and continue their work. She said, “We are blessed to have a manager who has been here forever, since his first job as a teenager. One of our employees is the eighth member of his family to work here. I love that!”
There are no current plans to make any radical changes to the building or to the cinema’s film showings. The Cinemas will continue to participate in the annual Mendocino Film Festival and would like to offer community groups a location for presentations or meetings. There might even come a time when the new owners could offer the small, 40 seat upstairs theater for birthday rental.
However, Desiree did note that it will take a while to field through the complex network of film studios contracts still in place and understand what commitments must still be honored. That doesn’t mean that Ramos isn’t open to considering films of less mainstream genres. She already has ideas about showing other types of films for two-day runs.
For younger movie-goers who may be concerned about changes in the candy bar selection, nothing will change. The popcorn and Skittles are safe! However, Ramos said they will consider offering offering beer and wine along nutritious snacks, allergy-friendly, without empty calories, perhaps from a local vendor.
Ramos said that the rush of summer blockbuster releases is winding down, and the next cycle of major movie releases will come around the holidays. In the meantime, she has plenty of ideas to draw in movie-goers of all ages. The 50th anniversary of “Jaws” is approaching, and Ramos is toying with putting on a “Jaws” series festival.
Given the opportunity to speak directly to the community, Ramos said, “Come to the movies and say hi! Let us know what you’d like to see. I’ll do my best.”
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