Group seeks to restore Newton's Fox
Goal is to return theater to its 1950s-era glory
By
Lori Kurtzman
NEWTON - Behind a white canvas screen,
Mike Penner runs his flashlight beam over the dusty shapes in the
shadows of Newton's Fox Theatre stage.
A popcorn machine, its plastic windows
broken, sits to one side. Rolls of carpet circa 1960 litter the floor,
weaving around the piles of trashed cherry red seat backs, dust and tiny
bug carcasses. Stepping over some plastic chair parts, Penner points his
beam high, showing the rough cut where Fox workers in 1955 took a chain
saw to what was once an ornate plaster proscenium arch.
"They just came in and ripped
everything out," said the 54-year-old Penner.
They had to, he said, to make room for
the screen. The theater on Main Street opened in 1914 and once showcased
vaudeville acts. It closed its doors in 1999 after an evening showing of
a new movie: Ron Howard's "EDtv."
Now it's cold and musty inside. The red
letters that should be up on the marquee sit in stacks near the
theater's vacant ticket booth. Penner, who used to proudly escort his
dates to the theater, calls the place a "dead black hole."
But just a few days ago, passers-by saw
a glimmer of hope that the Fox is coming back to life.
For the first time in years, the
marquee lights at the theater - what were left of them - glittered.
Traffic in front of the theater slowed.
Penner, the president of The Historic
Fox Theatre of Newton Inc., a newly formed nonprofit organization,
recalled with a wide smile the moment his group punched the marquee
switches.
"Some people who live in town have
never even been here," he said.
So for those people - and for former
residents like Penner, who can still picture the downtown in its heyday
- the Fox group is hoping to restore the 88-year-old theater to its
1950s-era glory.
They want to make the theater a
community center - not only a place that shows movies, but also plays
host to speakers and conventions, and stages plays and musicals.
In doing this, the group hopes to
breathe new life into a stale downtown.
At a Newton City Commission meeting
Feb. 26, Penner's organization bought the Fox for $1. The city had held
the theater in its possession after Dickinson Theatres donated the
building almost three years ago.
"It was our intent to keep the
theater in mothballs and not let it deteriorate," Newton City
Manager Jim Heineke said.
As the city waited for a suitable owner
to appear, Penner and his former high school classmates met in Wichita,
and an idea slowly began to form.
'A lot of work'
The Newton Fox Theatre was built in
1914 after the nearby Gem theater was destroyed by fire.
It had a full pit for an orchestra and
coal shoots for heating furnaces in the basement.
It was known as the Royal Theater until
1921, when it was renamed the Regent and revamped for staging vaudeville
acts. In the 1920s it started showing silent films, Penner said, and in
the 1930s the theater was fitted with its first sound system.
When 21st Century Fox bought the
theater in 1955, workers tore into the stage, putting up a large canvas
screen and cutting away at the arch above.
And after that, not much changed inside
the building, Penner said. Behind the screen there are still upstairs
dressing rooms for actors and a pulley system for stage scenery. A huge
second-floor loft that Penner thinks might have been a ballroom still
has antique stenciling on the ceiling.
The theater's 440 seats are new, and
the paint on the walls is just a few years old, but the place retains a
lot of its 1950s character - and its junk, as a tour behind the screen
shows.
"There's a heck of a lot of work
to do here just to clean it up," Penner said.
The group figures it will cost about
$500,000 to bring the theater back to life. Heating and air conditioning
alone will cost about $100,000.
"They could probably open the
doors pretty easily," said Tim Johnson, Newton's director of
community development.
Renovation of Hutchinson's Fox Theatre
cost nearly nine times what the Newton group is looking to raise.
Hutchinson Fox Theatre Executive Director Jan Peters estimated the final
restoration cost at $4.5 million.
Unlike Hutchinson's Fox Theatre, the
building in Newton won't be restored to its original design, Johnson
said, instead going back to its 1955 concept.
The Newton group needs public support,
from both volunteers offering manual labor and benefactors offering
cash.
Depending on community interest, the
project could take anywhere from one to eight years, Penner said.
They're willing to wait.
Class project
So where does this group, whose members
live from Florida to Alaska, get its motivation?
It started at a class reunion in
Wichita last year: All 10 people on the board of directors are 1965
Newton High School graduates.
"Mac (Cookson) and I were standing
outside a hotel at Old Town," said Penner, a retired fire chief who
now lives in Lawrence.
The two looked around them and said,
"Well, you know we could really do something like this for
Newton."
The original idea was to form a
for-profit group that would develop condominiums above the first floors
of the Newton Main Street building, Penner said.
But the task became too big.
They decided to start with a smaller,
civic venture. The Fox was a perfect project, a building they'd seen
once in its glory, and now shut down.
When the group first presented its idea
to the city commission on Nov. 27, Cookson, who lives in Washington,
D.C., said Newton's downtown had become another case of a place that had
been "bypassed, strip-malled and downsized."
"We've begun to think of (The Fox)
as a symbol," Penner said. "We're hoping that it will serve as
a bit of a catalyst."
The initial group has split itself into
two entities: the nonprofit Fox organization and a for-profit
development group that for now is taking a back seat to the theater
project, which is already creating a buzz throughout this city of 17,190
people.
"This is the best idea we've had
come along and the best group that's come along," said Virgil
Penner, who heads the Newton Area Chamber of Commerce.
"The word 'legacy' has been thrown
out there," Johnson said.
Lori Kurtzman can be reached at
lkurtzman@hutchnews.com or at (620) 694-5700, ext. 318.
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