The Strand Theater on Main Street in Waynesville sits vacant, its façade faded and decrepit, doors covered over with paper, linoleum floors peeling. Inside, the hallway splits, a descending ramp leading to rows of brownish, orange seats staring expectantly up at nothing. The silver screen is long since gone.

The roof of the second story balcony is black and charred, evidence of a fire that started in the projection room. The projectors themselves survived and now stand like great, cogged turrets silently awaiting action.

Despite its derelict state, The Strand still bears great potential. The question is, to become what? New owner Joey Massie doesn’t yet know. Office space, performing arts venue, movie theater, some combination of each — they’re all possibilities.

Or, he could sell it.

It all comes down to the numbers, the creation of a successful business plan. It’s the unromantic but realistic underside to making a decision about how, and if, one of Waynesville’s historic landmarks should be preserved.

“If we don’t see a picture that’s self-sustaining, I don’t know what we’ll do at that point,” Massie said.

But for those dreaming of the resurrection of a Main Street movie theater, there’s hope. When Massie, a contractor by trade, speaks of remodeling there’s a gleam in his eye. His three sons, ages 20, 23 and 25, are coming home for the summer to help out. He’s already started collecting art deco furniture to match the theater’s original 1942 décor.

There could be a large screen for first run movies, a smaller screen for foreign and independent films, akin to the Fine Arts Theater or Asheville Pizza & Brewing Company, and if done right, he could keep the stage the Haywood Arts Repertory Theater troupe once used for its productions and use it for live music, akin to Asheville’s concert venue The Orange Peel. There could be an upstairs pub. And maybe even some outdoor seating.

Not that he’s thought about it. It’s just something that happens to be in his blood, and he’s no stranger to The Strand. The theater was passed down by Massie’s mother, Mary, a Waynesville institution in and of herself.

Massie’s grandfather, J.E. Massie, owned theaters in Waynesville, Sylva, Bryson City and Tennessee. Massie’s Park Theater in Waynesville operated during the heyday of the movie industry, and Main Street was home to not just one, but three theaters — the Park, the Waynewood and the Bijou.

“I remember going to the opening night of the Park Theater, ‘Pennies From Heaven’ was the movie,” said Waynesville Mayor Henry Foy.

Actors like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers gave live performances at the theater; however, the Park didn’t last. With the rise of television, theaters were no longer the primary source of visual entertainment. J.E. Massie closed his doors, renovated and the theater became a bowling alley. But another family had built the Strand on the opposite side of the street from the Park and Joey Massie’s parents bought out the theater to run as their own.

“I can remember it cost a whole quarter to go to the movies, and you could get popcorn and the whole nine yards,” said Waynesville Fire Chief Bill Fowler, who most often opted to see Flash Gordon or Lone Ranger pictures.

Joey Massie began working at his parents’ theater when he was about 12 or 13, sweeping floors and gradually growing into ticket sales. The job kept him busy, too busy, he said.

“I did resent it when I became an older teen because I would be working at the theaters looking at everyone else out having fun,” he said.

At 15, Massie was robbed at knifepoint while working the ticket counter at the Smoky Mountain Drive In. With their knife pressed to Massie’s neck, the robbers demanded money and fled. Massie knew the men, and knew that they most likely would not have hurt him, but reported the crime to the police who later caught them.

After the incident, Massie went on to run the projectors at the Strand. Films would arrive in large, metal cases, with an individual film split into perhaps six different reels. Massie would load the two projectors — the first with reel one, the second with reel two — and then watch and wait for the cue to switch.

The cue would be what is traditionally called a “cigarette burn,” a small, oval shaped black dot with orange edges that appears in the upper right hand side of the screen. Today, films have been condensed onto one large reel, making reel switching and cigarette burns largely obsolete.

At 19, lacking the emotional attachment to the theater his parents bore, Massie’s career at the Strand came to an end.

“I think that I just determined it was a dead end for me,” he said.

He had been working with local contractors and discovered he liked working with his hands. After leaving the theater, he went on to college for a couple of years, but quit to enter the field and start his own business, Benchmark Builders.

The Strand continued on as a movie theater until the late 1970s. In the early 80s a fire started in the projection room, causing smoke damage and charring the rafters, but the rest of the theater was unharmed, thanks to the projection room’s design to be fireproof — old celluloid films had a bit of a tendency to burn.

By 1985, the Strand had a temporary tenant with the Haywood Arts Repertory Theater troupe.

“We had nowhere to go,” said HART member and Waynesville alderman Libba Feichter.

Mary Massie allowed the theater troupe to use the facility for a nominal fee until the group stabilized. Rent gradually increased and HART, pairing up with the Haywood County Arts Council, attempted to purchase the building, as it was badly in need of repair and the organization could not commit the money to a building they were only renting.

“Several times we’d be very close to what we thought was an agreement on the building, and Mary would reluctantly withdraw,” Feichter said. “I understand where she was coming from, she felt like it was a part of her children’s inheritance.”

Finally in 1993, facing major electrical upgrades mandated by the town’s fire department, HART decided to relocate and embarked on the campaign to build what is now the Performing Arts Center at the Shelton House on Pigeon Street.

With HART’s departure, the Strand became an empty shell of its former glory.

“It’s a far cry from what it was when it was operating,” Foy said.

Now, changes are on the horizon.

“The why of it all is I was just given this,” Massie said of The Strand.

After 28 years as a contractor, Massie has the freedom and the ability to pick up a side project. He doesn’t plan to give up his day job, but those who have gone before him say that it isn’t so much of a day job, as a night job, a very long night job.

Christy Williams and her husband, Dave, Haywood County residents, were some of the original stakeholders in the Asheville Pizza & Brewing Co. — the revised version of the Two Moons Brew & View, which went bankrupt in 1998. The Pizza & Brewing Co. consolidated a locally owned pizza company with the film side of Two Moons.

After four years of running what boils down to a restaurant and bar, and with a child to take care of and a possible move in the future, the Williams sold their shares in the company. The lessons they learned will be passed on, as Dave Williams is one of many industry professionals Massie has consulted with prior to making a decision about The Strand’s future.

But Christy Williams sees great potential for the theater as an entertainment venue and bar, as something that would appeal to locals, as well as tourists.

“I just feel like that thing could take off,” she said. “There’s not a lot to offer in Waynesville as far as that goes.”