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City Council Explores Renovating Capitol Theatre
posted by
Roger Katz
on
April 30, 2004 at 2:07 pm
NEW LONDON, CT — The New London City Council is going to explore ways to renovate the long-abandoned Capitol Theatre and make it into a cultural attraction for the city, according to a new report in the New London Day.
The Capitol Theatre closed in 1974 after a fire marshall shut the theater down for code violations. It has remained padlocked ever since. Despite the fact that $400,000 was put into stabilizing the theater’s roof in 2000, the building is a wreck and would need millions of dollars of renovations to become a usable theater again.
Among the obstacles faced by those interested in reopening in the 1921 facility is the fact that any group using it would need to be able to afford sizable overhead costs to keep the theatre up and running.
Also problematic is the fact that this small city of about 28,000 has already restored a movie palace, the Garde Theatre, operating up the street as a performing arts center. Finally, in the 30 years since the Capitol has closed, buildings has apparently been erected directly behind it. This makes expansion of the too-small-by-modern-standards stage area unfeasible.
Comments (2)
We currently have a great offer for your refurbishing project. Although we can not help with funding, we can offer great Auditorium seats (fully cushioned \ floor mount) for a very great price.
For $59 USD we have numerous very well maintained seats, digital pictures can be provided, that could drastically reduce your renovation costs.
Give us a call (780) 432-4765 if you would be interested in these very historical seats.
Thomas
It has been reported that the VOX church organization will purchase the Capital Theater building. This is my daughter’s Church and they have various sites and is the fastest growing Non Denominational Christian Church in CT and elsewhere. They use the the College Street Theater in New Haven quite often and I even attended the Christmas program with my daughter last night. That gave me a great idea on just how the Capital Theater will actually work out and be a great fit for the VOX Church. The will need more gathering space and offices so the old Hotel building next door is probably in the works as well. The capital has a balcony and will need it. The Plaster animation is there and can be repaired. The auditorium is empty of seats and stage equipment but that stuff is available. I would have preferred the City to follow thru with their plans with selling Bonds but this may end up being a better deal because with the design that VOX Theater will end up with the old theater would have multi use options Be assured that it was have all new electric, plumbing, heating and ac and of course state of the art lighting, sound and stage rigging. My guess is that they will tier the floor for various seating and table options. I am a Catholic but I clearly understand the attraction to these new Churches especially VOX, Welcome to New London, this could be a boom for New London’s other businesses especially restaurants on both Bank and State Street.