Nick Cantu makes his way up the back stairs of the old Citrus Theater. If walls could only talk, the stories the eight-decades-old movie house could tell.
In an upstairs hallway, Cantu points to a room where he said the original owner of the Citrus, a doctor, practiced medicine in World War II-era Edinburg. For decades, the Citrus played the role of the hometown single-screen theater.
The multi-screen movie plexes in nearby McAllen would inevitably come. The passing of eras relegated the venerable Citrus to the shadows. The downtown square theater was mothballed, a storage facility closed off to a community it long served. There it stood for over three decades before Cantu, a 30-something Edinburg native and commercial developer, took the plunge and pursued a project long wished for in his hometown.
Cantu was going to bring the old Citrus back.
It will return in a different form. It will be a venue to match the times with comedy shows, intimate concert settings, and space for wedding receptions and other celebrations. Cantu does aim to show some classic movies at the restored Citrus if he gets the necessary permissions. The reception thus far indicates many in Edinburg would be happy just to have the iconic movie house back in business.
“This place has some good bones,” Cantu said of the 1930s-era construction of steel beams and intricate woodwork. “This baby still has a lot of life to it.”
With that, he flips a switch to one of the old projectors that long ago flickered and looked over the balcony to the big screen on the bottom floor. It snapped on with a start, ready to go, proof positive that Cantu’s optimism rings true.
Community Connections
Cantu calls it Citrus Live.
In early 2022 he made his plans public and he began marketing the return of the Citrus. Cantu offered a one-night tour of the theater he has still to revitalize. There were 350 slots available at no charge. They were gone within 24 hours of being made available online. During the April tour, Cantu and his staff found out just how much the old theater meant to people in Edinburg.
“People told us, ‘this is where I went on my first date,’ and ‘I got my first kiss here,'” Cantu said, recalling some of the stories. “People told us they were praying for us. The level of support we’ve gotten has just been amazing.”
The Citrus will be back and Cantu can already point to one downtown building he has revitalized. It’s the Society 204 coworking building that houses lawyers, architects, engineers “and everything in between,” said Cantu, who has his own office in the facility. In a previous life, it was Edinburg’s JCPenney, of the sort that were all over the country before the advent of shopping malls.
The Penney’s building, like the Citrus, laid vacant for years. Today, it’s a stylish facility with modernistic design touches to suit the professionals who office and work in what was once one of Edinburg’s favorite retail shops.
“It’s like a gym for professionals,” Cantu said of the 204 building. “I look at real estate like art.”
Bringing Movies Back
The Citrus for now looks much like it did when Cantu purchased the building nearly a year ago.
It won’t stay that way. The 11,000-square-foot facility with a height of nearly four stories will have a flexible lower floor that will have seating for some events and have it removed for others. Up top, the balcony with its nearly 300 seats will become anew. It is from up there that Cantu envisions moviegoers once again seeing images flicker on a new screen down below.
Artist renderings show the Citrus once again being a visual masterpiece. It will sit across from the street from the new Hidalgo County Courthouse that looms over a downtown Edinburg that’s getting a makeover nearly 100 years after the old theater opened. Cantu hopes to have the Citrus Live open in early 2023 – and with it – a restoration of a piece of Edinburg’s soul.