August 2, 2025
Iowa City, IA — Iowa City’s nonprofit cinema, FilmScene, is thrilled to announce that it has partnered with Resilient Sustainable Future for Iowa City (RSFIC) to purchase the building at 118 E. College St., home to its longstanding FilmScene on the Ped Mall venue, supporting its long-term presence in downtown Iowa City.
The two organizations, as well as their neighbors in the building, will celebrate the purchase with an open house on August 14th, from 4-6pm. The event is free and open to the public.
“This is a momentous day for our organization and the arts ecosystem in Iowa City,” said FilmScene Executive Director Andrew Sherburne. “In local ownership of an important cultural space and historic property, we’re taking another big step towards building the greatest small city for the arts.”
Founded in 2013, FilmScene has grown into Iowa’s premier nonprofit cinema with a vision of a better community through the shared experience of cinema. The $2.3 Million purchase marks a transformational moment for FilmScene, providing organizational stability and enabling long-term investment in physical upgrades, accessibility enhancements, and creative expansion. Thanks to the trust between the two local organizations, FilmScene will have two years to raise the $230,000 down payment.
"There is a lot of Iowa City retirement money and foundation money invested in Wall Street. Think of what we could do if we invested it here," said Michal Eynon-Lynch, President of RSFIC.
By providing a mortgage to FilmScene for the purchase of the building, RSFIC is continuing to develop local investment options that could eventually be accessible to many people in Iowa City. RSFIC has previously funded the purchase of two Iowa City rental houses with sustainable real estate company AstraCommons, keeping rents below “market rate” and working with tenants to purchase the houses themselves. RSFIC has also invested directly in real estate to rent to other non-profits for free - not only participating in the real estate market but also helping others create community value locally.
Why This Matters for FilmScene:
Why This Matters for Iowa City:
Why This Matters for RSFIC:
Earlier this year, FilmScene faced the termination of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a reflection of growing uncertainty for traditional funding and support streams. Yet thanks to widespread community support, the organization is committed to maintaining its community-centered, mission-based programming. Meanwhile, broader concerns about real estate stability in downtown Iowa City, including property foreclosures and predatory landlords, underscored the importance of FilmScene’s control over its own space, and to the benefit of the other local businesses in the building.
About RSFIC:
Resilient Sustainable Future for Iowa City (RSFIC, read “rizz-fick”) is a non-profit private foundation working to build long-term, systemic resilience in Iowa City. Founded in 2021, RSFIC purchased buildings and equipment for Wright House, Tamarack Discovery School, MDCIowa, and other resilience-oriented organizations. Since then, RSFIC has developed other ways to invest locally, and began operating a grants program to help everyday residents act on their own agency and resocialize their neighborhoods. In 2024, RSFIC and FilmScene formed the “Stories of Community” partnership to reframe narratives and popularize positive, empowering cultural mythologies. Following strategic values of relocalizing power, consuming less, growing solidarity and de-growing Individualism, demonstrating humility, and demonstrating integrity, RSFIC has helped over 100 groups of neighbors with grants, created 18 short films about local resilience, and reduced rents for residents and non-profits by $250,000 with innovative investments. Learn more at rsfic.org.
About FilmScene:
FilmScene is a nonprofit cinema arts organization with a mission to challenge, inspire, educate, and entertain our diverse communities through the shared discovery of film. Founded in 2011, FilmScene opened a single-screen cinema in fall of 2013, FilmScene on the Ped Mall. Over the course of the next decade, supported by an enthusiastic community, FilmScene has expanded twice, adding a screening room in 2013 on the Ped Mall and a second location, the three-screen state-of-the-art FilmScene at the Chauncey, in 2019. In 2021, FilmScene began operating a seasonal outdoor cinema, FilmScene in the Park, where it presents free open-air films to thousands each summer. In 2022, FilmScene launched Refocus Film Festival, a four-day cinematic celebration of the art of adaptation. The organization’s facilities growth has been matched by programmatic and patron growth, with FilmScene now screening 450 films per year for over 80,000 attendees, ensuring all our neighbors have access to world class cinema, thanks to the support of over 2500 member households. Learn more at icfilmscene.org.
About 118 E. College Street:
The Packing & Provisions Building at 118 E. College Street in Iowa City dates back to the 1860s and originally housed the Iowa City Packing and Provision Company, which gave the building its name. Over the next century, it served a range of commercial uses including a furniture and casket-making business, J.C. Penney, and Vito’s restaurant. In 2013, Marc Moen led a major renovation that restored the building’s historic character while modernizing it for contemporary use. Moen committed to building a single-screen art house theater, on the promise that the nascent non-profit cinema organization, FilmScene, could raise the capital before the opening date. FilmScene delivered on that trust, and the Scene 1 cinema opened in November 2013 becoming FilmScene’s first home. Two other current tenants, Velvet Coat, a locally-owned clothing retailer, and Modus Engineering, an Iowa-based engineering firm, have also occupied their spaces since the building’s renovation and today it stands as a model of adaptive reuse and downtown preservation.
