Iconic Austin theater tunes up for long-awaited expansion

AUSTIN – From its tornadic origins to the movies, concerts, nightclub and comedy acts over the years, the gorgeous Paramount has thrilled and entertained folks for almost a century.

Now supporters want to spend millions of dollars to ensure the historic property is around to entertain for another 100 years.

Arts advocates are about to embark on an eight-month, $4.3 million renovation and expansion project that will upgrade the building's technology and access. The project starts this week with a groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday night.

"This building is just an integral component to the social fabric, the cultural fabric of Austin and the surrounding area," said Thomas Robbins, executive director of Austin Area Arts, the group that runs the Paramount among other arts programs in town. "It's just an iconic building."

The Paramount was built in 1929 over the ruins of a theater destroyed in a tornado the previous year. It's a Spanish villa-style theater — meant to resemble a castle as part of its original mission to show first-run movies. On the northeast side of the stage is a small castle balcony curtained off; the northwest side technically had enough room for an organ in case "talkie" movies failed, but the theater never installed one.

It didn't always look like this, however. The theater showed movies and live shows until it closed in 1975, then it became a comedy club, disco, nightclub and bar over the years before going dark toward the end of the 1980s.

Austin Area Arts was formed in 1992 to buy and restore the theater, with help from the Minnesota Historical Society. Local volunteers mounted a massive renovation effort to restore the theater — at one point the previous owners had painted the interior all black instead of keeping the fantastic yellows, reds and starlight blues along the walls.

The Paramount has been a live venue since then, featuring everything from children's theater productions to live shows by Minnesota singer-songwriters Charlie Parr and Erik Koskinen. It has undergone a few fix-ups over the years — a new roof here, a new heating and ventilation system there — to keep the place running, but infrastructure issues remain.

The building lacks main-floor bathrooms; patrons instead must walk to an adjacent building formerly owned by the city's parks and recreation department. And wheelchair accommodations are lacking.

Workers will remove the wall between the theater and the restrooms, and add more restrooms on the main floor.

"We're going to make sure we have good, accessible seating areas on the main floor of the theater and then we're going to also be widening some of our theater seats," said Amy Wightkin, the Paramount's manager. "We also currently don't have an accessible route to the stage, so we're going to be creating that as well, and also make our dressing rooms and performers' bathrooms accessible."

The concessions stand will move to a more prominent position and a popcorn machine used since 1947 will be retired in favor of a modern model.

Crews will upgrade acoustics, replace the building's lights and circuitry, and move the sound system to a better location to accommodate bands. The place will even get showers for performers, a long-sought feature.

It's taken more than a decade to get to this point. Belita Schindler, the co-chair of the volunteer committee behind the project, remembers talking to Twin Cities architects in 2014, making far bigger expansion plans at the time.

"I've got boxes of notes sitting around with all the different designs we've gone through," Schindler said.

The project kicked off in earnest last fall when the local Hormel Foundation announced it would cover about $3.67 million for the project. Austin Area Arts hopes to raise another $1.2 million to offset remaining costs and pay off the mortgage for nearby property the group owns, cementing its finances for the future.

If all goes well, workers will be done with the expansion by mid-August, in time for the annual Austin Artworks Festival. Paramount staff plan a big concert to coincide with the festival and are vetting acts for the theater's re-debut.

For longtime staff and volunteers, the expansion feels serendipitous. Schindler picked the color of the Paramount's new seats, a lush light green, before staff discovered five of the Paramount's original seats from 1929 in the attic.

It was a similar silvery green.

"Isn't that fun?" Schindler said. "We must be on the right track."