The new owners of the Colonial Theatre in Belfast are making a number of state-mandated fire and safety improvements after reopening the 112-year-old cinema in November.
The Colonial Theatre previously closed in September 2022. Its former owners, Mike Hurley and Therese Bagnardi, sold it to a nonprofit organization that a local couple — Bill and Libby Catania — formed to reopen it.
The Catanias loaned $1 million for the organization to complete the purchase, according to the Press Herald. The organization is called the Hawthorne Theatre & Arts Collaborative, after the elephant sculpture that stands atop the theater.
Hawthorne Collaborative board member Alice Seeger said the theater was inspected before it reopened, but those inspectors didn’t catch some issues that were later identified by the state fire marshal’s office.
“We were sort of blindsided,” Seeger said. “We thought we knew what we needed to do. And then the fire marshal was able to point out other things that we weren’t aware of.”
Some of the changes that the group had to make included getting new sprinklers installed, widening the front doors and fixing emergency lighting, according to a report from the fire marshal’s office. The theater was able to get a one-year license to operate that was contingent on having a plan to fix the issues, according to Shannon Moss, a spokesperson for the fire marshal’s office.
About half of the violations have now been fixed, including the sprinklers, said Seeger, and the group has been working on finishing the rest of the work soon.
The Hawthorne Collaborative is paying for the improvements with an online fundraiser and the proceeds from ticket sales and memberships, Seeger said. It has received additional help from a donor who has pledged up to $50,000 in matching funds.
Despite the challenges, the theater is doing well, Seeger said. It has matinee and evening shows Thursday through Sunday during the winter, and hosts some fundraisers and indie film showings on other days of the week.
“We have a community of people who have been going to the Colonial Theatre for literally generations and have so many stories about how they went there as a child or how they take their grandchildren there,” Seeger said. “So everyone’s ecstatic about having the theater open again.”
