ANDERSON, Ind. —

The long-closed State Theater in downtown Anderson will be up for sheriff’s sale today,  months after a partnership of California investors that bought the building from local investors unraveled in a tangle of litigation.

State Theatre Properties LLC, an organization set up by Santa Monica, Calif., businesswoman Marla J. Rochlin, owns the building. Rochlin acknowledged Thursday that the sale essentially represents a foreclosure on herself. The minimum bid for the building is $150,000.

“If I can retain it, I will,” Rochlin said. “That is my goal.” Unless someone offers more than $150,000, Rochlin will get her wish. “If it doesn’t sell, it’s clean and it’s done and it’s mine,” she said.

Rochlin was a partner with Los Angeles investors Karen and Tom Paradiso, but the partnership dissolved. Tom Paradiso said the partners spent more than $1 million in recent years trying to convert the theater into a concert and performing arts venue.

According to court records and people familiar with the recent history of the theater, the Paradisos purchased the State on contract in 2005 from a group of local investors for $320,000.  “Our idea was to make it into a concert theater, tear the seats out on the floor and have table-and-chair seating,” Tom Paradiso said.

Within the last two years, the local group of investors sued the California partners because payments on the contract had stopped. Rochlin then paid the balance, and the theater was transferred to Rochlin’s State Theatre Properties LLC.

In January, Madison Circuit Court ordered a judgment of more than $197,000 in favor of State Theater Properties LLC. Today’s sheriff’s sale aims to satisfy that judgment.

The California partners and the Anderson group that sold the property agreed Thursday that the state of the State is disappointing. Paradiso said that because work on the building stopped, much of the interior restoration that was under way is being damaged by leaking pipes and the strain of an empty building.

“You can’t build a place like this today, and you’re so close to losing it,” Paradiso said. He  said he hopes someone will preserve the building for future generations.

WHBU radio host Doug Zook, one of the local investors who sold the State to the Paradisos, can recite facts about the theater: It was built in 1930. It was the first air-conditioned movie theater in the state. “Heathfully cooled,” the advertisements of the day boasted.

Zook also remembers the last event in the theater: His Anderson High School Class of 1979 25-year reunion in July 2004.

He looked inside the building for the last time in 2009. He said the seats had been stripped out on the main floor and the stage had been partly dismantled. “A lot of mess,” he said.

“It makes me sad to hear it’s gotten to that point,” Zook said of the sheriff’s sale. “When we originally sold the State Theater to the group out of California, we heard some of their plans and ideas of what they wanted to do to make it a focal point in downtown Anderson.

“We were hoping for big things from the individuals that bought the theater from us,” he said.

And so were the partners. Rochlin said the building remains a splendid one with great potential as a concert venue or lecture hall.

Paradiso said he still believes the State could be part of a unique downtown — one with two classic movie palaces blocks apart on the same strip. Despite a situation that soured at the State, he said he’s still bullish on Anderson.

“You have an incredible gold mine under your nose,” he said of the potential of downtown to be a food and entertainment hub. “People will come to Anderson,” he said. “You really would rival Broad Ripple.”

Contact Dave Stafford: 648-4250, dave.stafford@heraldbulletin.com