Clarksburg Mayor Confident Robinson Performing Arts Center to Open Spring 2018

CLARKSBURG, W.Va. — Clarksburg Mayor Cathy Goings expects the old Robinson Grand Theater, now the Robinson Grand Performing Arts Center, will open on schedule in Spring 2018.

“It’s very exciting,” she said on Friday’s edition of “The Gary Bowden Show” on the AJR News Network. “We’ve been working behind the scenes all along to get to this point, and now we’ll be able to see the fruits of our labor.”

Clarksburg City Council agreed to a grant and lease agreement with the Clarksburg Development Authority at their last City Council meeting, which brings the project another step closer to beginning construction.

“It’s not just a theater,” Goings said. “It’s a performing arts center. We had to take into account what their needs would be and implement that into the design of the performing arts center.”

Although the expected opening is just over one year away, Goings expects an initial “soft” opening.

“We would get our local performances in there, and they can do plays or recitals or music events,” she said. “Then to work through that throughout the summer, and then do a big grand opening with a major headliner in Fall of 2018.”

Goings said representatives from the city have already been in contact with a number of organizations who could potentially operate as an opening act for the first months of the theater’s re-branding.

“City Manager [Martin Howe] and the Assistant City Manager [Anthony Bellotte] reached out to local colleges, universities, performing art groups, schools,” she said. “We wanted to take all their needs into account when we designed the new performing arts center.”

The refurbished and revamped Robinson Grand Performing Arts Center will hold a capacity of approximately 950 seats and cover more than 44,000 square feet. The project is going to cost approximately $15 million, but the City already has upwards of $1.5 million committed from a silent capital campaign.

“Since we purchased it, we had the opportunity to get some adjacent properties,” Goings said. “That kind of gave us some initial space that we didn’t have.”

The City of Clarksburg initially acquired the building in 2014 after several years sitting largely vacant.

Goings said a public capital campaign will begin soon in an effort to raise an additional $4 million to reduce overall taxpayer contribution.

Additionally, the nationwide search for an Executive Director has been narrowed down to two candidates. The search began with 20 applicants.

Eventually, that group was whittled down to five candidates who all interviewed either in-person or via remote broadcast.

The Executive Director will be tasked with revitalizing a theater that first opened in 1913, but has sat largely vacant since the 1980’s.

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