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EXETER — While there is still no official confirmation of the identity of the Ioka theater building’s buyer, the owner of the Boston investment firm whose representative placed the winning bid has local ties.
A Kensington Investment Co. bid $600,000 at Thursday’s public auction of the downtown property. The principal of Kensington Investment Co. is Alan Lewis of Kensington.
Lewis is an eighth-generation Kensington resident and philanthropist who previously donated $1 million to develop Sawyer Park in his home town.
When asked about Lewis on Friday afternoon, Sawyer Park trustee Donna Carter declined to comment. Attempts to reach Lewis by phone at his home and business Friday were unsuccessful. Exeter resident Carol Walker Aten, who was hired by the buyer to be the project manager for the Ioka revival effort, declined to comment when asked whether Lewis is the buyer. Aten adamantly denied rumors Thursday that the buyer was best-selling author Dan Brown. She has revealed little about the buyer, saying only that the person is a Seacoast philanthropist who intends to reopen the Ioka as a community theater.
Exeter resident John Merkle, chairman of the Exeter Theater Company, a nonprofit group that’s expected to work closely with Aten on the theater’s revival, also declined to say whether Lewis is the buyer. Merkle did speak highly of the buyer.
“I think this is an individual that has a historic track record of being benevolent, and from what I’m hearing, he’s very sincere to his effort to keep the building a cultural fixture.”
According to Lewis’ biography, posted on the Kensington Investment Web site, he’s an “experienced real estate investor and developer, with extensive holdings in the Greater Boston area.” His family also owns Grand Circle Travel, a Boston travel agency.
Aten has not yet said when the identity of the Ioka’s buyer will be revealed.
Representatives of St. Jean Auctioneers in Epping, who conducted Thursday’s auction, also declined to identify the buyer, saying the sale has yet to close.
The building’s former owner, Roger Detzler of Immer Besser LLC, closed the theater on Christmas Eve 2008. The building reopened in 2010 as an ice cream parlor/diner called Ioka Cafe and a downstairs club, 48 Below. Both closed earlier this year. In November, the building’s mortgage holder, People’s United Bank in Dover, filed a notice of foreclosure sale on the building, citing “breach of conditions of the mortgage.”
The building sold for almost double its assessed value of $350,900. As part of the purchase price, the nearly $30,000 owed to the town in back taxes on the property is expected to be paid off.
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