The most prominent and successful theater renovation has been at the State Theatre in downtown Traverse City, which reopened in 2007 after a renovation spearheaded by filmmaker Michael Moore.
It helped fuel the continued rebirth of Traverse City, providing customers for the fine-dining restaurants up and down Front Street and helping give more prominence to the Traverse City Film Festival, which Moore founded in 2005. The festival brings thousands to the city in later July and early August for screenings of upwards of 100 movies at a variety of venues.
Run by volunteers, the theater shows first-run films as well as midnight classics and kids' matinees for 25 cents.
The State traces its history to 1916, when the Lyric Theatre opened. It was destroyed by fire in 1923 and rebuilt and reopened later that year. The Lyric was destroyed by fire again in 1948 and a new theater built on the site in 1949 and christened the State.
The theater closed in 1996 and wound up in the hands of the Rotary Charities, which donated it to the film festival in 2007, the year its renovation was complete.
The State's success led to the opening in 2013 of another downtown theater, the Bijou, a project that renovated the Con Foster Museum building, which had been built by the Civil Works Administration in the 1930s but had sat vacant for years.
Traverse City is also home to the City Opera House, which was built in 1892 for $50,000. The building was added to National Register of Historic Places in 1972, fell on hard times and was given to the city in 1980. The City Opera House Heritage Association, a nonprofit, has restored the downtown building to its Victorian grandeur, preserving its fresco paintings and gold-leaf accents, and it is now home to a variety of events, including musical concerts, the National Writers Series, the Traverse City Film Festival, conferences and weddings.
Here are some other cities where old theaters are playing a starring role:
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