BELFAST—For the last two years, Michael Hurley and Therese Bagnardi, owners of The Colonial Theatre, have been discussing their next career change, and in mid-June, they announced the colorful, eclectic theater was up for sale to the right owner.

Since the announcement was released, Hurley said “all kinds of people” are interested in taking over the theater, but he and Bagnardi are taking their time culling through the prospects.

Married couple Hurley and Bagnardi bought the theater in 1995. They said in a press release: “We have been blessed to have a 20-year-run at caring for the 103-year-old theater and we've loved almost every minute. When we took over the theater, the lobby was filled with a video tape rental shop;there was no Internet; kids used pay phones to get a ride home; real 35 mm film rolled through the projectors; the rest rooms looked like a place not to linger, and there was two tired screens.”

We asked Hurley to give us a Top 10 list of the theater’s best moments:

1. In 1912, The Colonial Theatre opened same day the Titanic set sail.

2. In 1924, The Colonial burned to the ground and eventually was rebuilt.

3. In 1995, The Colonial is taken over by Therese Bagnardi and Mike Hurley.

4. That same year starts the first of 20 years offering the Free Family Holiday Matinee Film Series with more than 100,000 free movies for kids and families made possible by local underwriters.

5. One year later, Hurley and Bagnardi did major construction, reviving and unveiling the grand "front of the house" which featured a new balcony and surround sound. They had to creatively trench under the theater to build out a third theater named "Dreamland."

6. In, 1996, Perry's Nut House elephants invaded the theater. (Back story: the elephants in the lobby and the life-size elephant "Hawthorne" trumpeting from the roof came from dismantled pieces when Perry’s Nut House on Route 1 originally closed.)

7. In 2006, the yearly incredible holiday decorations go up.

8. In 1997, New Years by the Bay took over the grand stage and has done so since, every New Year’s Eve.

9. In 2010, the Free Range Music Festival rocked the Colonial. (Now called the All Roads Music Festival, it still continues.)

10. In 2012, all theaters across the nation, including the Colonial, had to covert to digital cinema in order to show films.

“If I was selling a convenience store, all the local media wouldn’t have called me up,” said Hurley. “There’s a real aspect of glamour that goes with this business. It’s more fun than a lot of businesses. I go to this theater convention where you’ll meet 30 Hollywood A-list stars in three or four days and I can tell you if I hadn’t gotten into the movie theater business, I wouldn’t have met my hero Mohammed Ali.” (He was promoting the film Ali with Will Smith)

After 103 years, The Colonial  is still going strong. It is a cultural institution in downtown Belfast and on the National Register of Historic Places.Hurley stated 2015 will be the theater’s best grossing year in history.

“What we’re in the business of is creating illusion,” he said. “When people come to our movie theater, they are enthralled with the illusions on screen and this is something that anyone who works in the movie theater business will always enjoy.”

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com