South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Parker Playhouse to shut down for upgrades
Auditorium to close May 2019 for project estimated at $25M
With a leaking roof, toilet plumbing woes and a busted air conditioner, Fort Lauderdale’s 51-year-old Parker Playhouse theater is showing its age.
Now, the popular auditorium inside Holiday Park will shut down May 2019 for the first wave of upgrades to the venue, a project planned to cost $25 million, Parker Playhouse officials told SouthFlorida.com on Friday.
When finished, the Parker Playhouse’s facelift will include a glitzy central lobby, a sleek VIP lounge, state-of-the-art audiovideo equipment and advanced acoustics, Broward Center president and CEO Kelley Shanley says. Renovations are expected to be completed before the venue’s 2020-2021 season kicks off in October 2020.
“If we didn’t start thinking about fundraising five years ago, we’d be in a much different position now, but we prepared far in advance for these upgrades,” Shanley says. “Summer is a slower time for the Parker, so that’s when the big construction will happen.”
The playhouse’s current arts season will wrap with the Music of Cream: 50th Anniversary World Tour on April 19, Shanley says. The venue will then shut down for upgrades, which include a cosmetic revamp of the building’s neo-classical façade and replacing the Parker’s air-conditioning unit, which “went on the fritz” two months ago, Shanley says.
For now, two portable A/C units parked on the lawn have been pumping air into the playhouse until the venue can replace its old unit next summer. The Parker should reopen in October, he says.
Other upgrades will include a renovated lobby and box office, with plush seating and a central concession stand that will replace the venue’s two bars in the east and west wing. The Parker’s current restroom will be gutted and replaced with a VIP lounge, while new restrooms will branch off from the lobby. The auditorium, meanwhile, will keep its original seating floor plan (“there’s already plenty of legroom,” Shanley says), but a new sound system will improve acoustics, he adds.
“We don’t even have an ice machine over there now,” Shanley says. “There’s a real focus on being true to the original charm and feel of the building, and we’re trying to change as few things as possible during construction.”
One thing that won’t change, Shanley says, is the programming. Daytime construction won’t overlap with the playhouse’s evening shows, and even if it did, performances would shift to a backup venue: the Amaturo Theater at Broward The Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County has a new CEO and president, Johann Zietsman.
Center for the Performing Arts.
Fueling the upgrades are
100-plus private donors, who gave $14 million to the playhouse’s fundraising arm, the Broward Performing Arts Foundation. The city of Fort Lauderdale, meanwhile, will give the playhouse $6.2 million from its general fund over the next 13 years, in increments of $500,000 every October, city manager Lee Feldman says. The city’s general fund is partly funded by taxpayers, he says.
To reach its $25 million goal, the Parker Playhouse will sell naming rights to the venue’s new lounge and lobby, along with commemorative engraved pavers priced between
$250 and $1,000, Broward Performing Arts Foundation board chair Richard Welch says.
The renovations come at a time when the city is Parker Playhouse’s expects to complete its upgrades by October 2020.
weighing family-friendly upgrades for next-door War Memorial Auditorium, including ice-hockey rinks, indoor soccer fields and live music. The Parker’s sister venue, the Broward Center, finished a $58 million renovation in 2014, adding a new restaurant and other upgrades.
“I’m actually surprised
how much we’ve raised in just a year,” Welch says. “We have this iconic theater and arts landmark that doesn’t just draw nostalgic people who remember it from the ’60s and ’70s. We have a young generation that sees value in it, too.”