Promoter Out of Theater for Debt

A year after making a bid to expand into the Los Angeles concert market by purchasing the Raymond Theatre in Pasadena for $2.5 million, pop music promoter Gary Folgner has given up his hold on the 70-year-old former vaudeville house.

The Orange County-based Folgner, who operates the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano and the Ventura Theatre in Ventura, said that he has had to turn the Raymond back to its former owners because he fell $100,000 behind in loan payments. Folgner said that on Thursday the two Pasadena developers who hold the mortgage turned down his proposal to continue running the 1,910-seat theater while paying the debt gradually out of projected earnings.

He said that developers Gene Buchanan and Marc Perkins will operate the theater themselves until they can sell it, although they are willing to allow him to take it over again if he can come up with the $100,000 before another buyer emerges. Folgner said that the chances of that are “very slim.”