More than the marquee: City looks at $19.4M Lafayette Theater renovation
Lafayette preps for overhaul of former downtown movie theater at Sixth and Main. Plus, deadlines pushed back in Indiana Senate Dist. 23 recount. Your Indiana Fiddlers’ Gathering schedule. And more.
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CITY LOOKS AT $19.4M LAFAYETTE THEATER RENOVATION
A few days after local and state historic preservation boards signed off on exterior renovations for the Lafayette Theater – including to its iconic marquee at the corner of Sixth and Main streets – the city made moves Thursday morning to finance an estimated $19.4 million overall rehab of the former movie house into a downtown entertainment venue.
The construction inside and outside the building at 600 Main St., slated to start in August and wrap up in March 2028, would include new first- and second-floor seating, lighting, sound and stage equipment for a venue ready for Civic Theatre productions, concerts and other events.
The work comes seven years after the city picked up the property for $290,000 in 2019 with hopes of preserving it and making it part of a portfolio of Lafayette-owned entertainment venues, which already includes the Long Center for the Performing Arts on Sixth Street and Columbian Park’s Loeb Stadium.
“We knew it was going to be expensive,” Dennis Carson, Lafayette’s economic development director, said Thursday. “We didn’t know exactly how much until we got into it. But to make it something that is going to be viable for use and an asset for the community, it’s going to take this much money to get it there. We didn’t want to do it just part way.”
