4 outline plan to revive 1875 Batesville theater

Adam Curtwright took tickets and sold concessions at the Melba Theater in downtown Batesville as an employee when he was in high school in 1998.

Now, 17 years later, he will soon be taking tickets again as the co-owner of the 140-year-old building. Curtwright; his wife, Mandi Curtwright; and Joe and Janelle Shell, all of Batesville, bought the theater on the west end of Main Street a year ago and intend to renovate it.

On Thursday, the four outlined their plans to open the theater this fall. They want to show "throwback" movies and host concerts, church meetings, business seminars and other events.

"My husband worked here and got attached to the theater," Mandi Curtwright said. "He said we should buy property downtown and 'see what happens.'"

Local officials of the town of 10,240 hope the theater renovation is a catalyst to keep the downtown revitalization project moving forward.

"The Melba has always been there," said Danell Hetrick, a representative with the Batesville Area Chamber of Commerce. "It was a novelty thing to go to the movies, and everyone knows the theater.

"We're seeing revitalization on that end of Main Street, and we're getting a diverse set of vendors coming in. Before, we had vacant buildings. Now we have an art gallery, antique shops and other things."

Mandi Curtwright said her group has applied for three grants to help fund work on the theater. The roof leaks, and seats need re-upholstering. The group will put in a new movie screen and buy a projector to show digital films.

The renovation will cost about $400,000, she said.

"It is overwhelming," she said. "But we've had a lot of offers of help. Everybody made us realize this won't be as hard as we thought."

The building was constructed in 1875 and served as an opera house until 1940, when movies were first shown there. It thrived and even competed with the Landers Theater, which was built in 1906 about two blocks east of the Melba. In 2008, the owners of the Landers renovated their building into a church.

"This is going to be exciting," Joe Shell said of the Melba. "There is a big revitalization downtown, and this will be a significant cog in that wheel."

Towns across the United States have often turned to theater projects as a way to help boost their economies, said Ken Stein, the executive director of the League of Historic American Theaters, a Baltimore organization that oversees theater restorations.

Theaters flourished in the 1940s and 1950s but began dwindling in towns when movies switched to digital. Owners could not afford the expensive projectors to show the newer films, and many closed the theaters.

"We saw bunches close down in the 1990s, but we're seeing communities get together and reopen them," Stein said.

"I think people recognize that theaters can be better renovation tools," he said. "Downtown theaters draw audiences at nontraditional times. [Downtown] restaurants might lose customers after lunch because workers go back to work and then home, but a theater will bring them back."

The opening of the York Theatre in Elmhurst, Ill., changed the downtown in that Chicago suburb, said Richard Fosbrink, the executive director of the Theatre Historical Society based in Elmhurst.

"Twenty years ago, you could roll a bowling ball down the street and not hit anyone," Fosbrink said. "We reopened the York, and now the city has come alive. We have coffee shops, restaurants and a 600-car parking garage."

In Arkansas, at least a dozen theaters have been turned into community centers, art galleries, live-performance venues or old-time movie houses. Theaters in Paragould, Blytheville, Harrison, Forrest City and elsewhere have either been renovated or are undergoing repairs.

Mandi Curtwright envisions holding tours of the theater for schoolchildren once the work at the Melba is finished. Her group also plans to develop a small museum in the Melba's lobby where an old projector, film and other relics from the theater will be displayed.

"We want this to be a community place," she said.

State Desk on 04/10/2015

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