Center Theatre looks to make seating upgrades

GRUNDY CENTER - A staple in the community for nearly 80 years, the Center Theatre is not only a piece of living history in town, but an asset that provides fun, inexpensive entertainment for children and adults of all ages.
 
Despite being built in 1940, management at the Center Theatre strives to provide guests with the most modern amenities. Currently, the theatre is in the process of raising money to replace the older, worn out seats with brand new seating. The new seats will be comfy leatherette chairs with more space, and moveable armrests.
 
“Our biggest thing is that we always want to provide guests with the best experience possible,” says longtime theatre manager, Mike Steinmeyer, who has been with the theatre for 24 years. “Our current seats have had a lot of use over the years and its taken a toll on them. So what we’ve been focusing on now is starting to gather some money to replace the seats.”
 
Steinmeyer says they will start by replacing the seats in the smaller theatre first, as those seats were bought refurbished about 10 years ago, and need to be replaced first. After that, they plan to replace the seats in the larger theatre, which were bought new in 2003, though that phase of the project is quite a ways down the road.
 
As a discount, community theatre, the Center Theatre relies more heavily on grants and donations to fund improvement projects like this one, which keep prices affordable for families.
 
So far, the theatre has gathered around $14,000 in grants and donations towards the project, and the entire project to replace all the seats in both auditoriums is expected to cost around $75,000 Steinmeyer says.
 
For more information on donating to the Center Theatre’s new seating fund, contact the theatre at (319) 824-6571.
 
The full story is available in this week's Grundy Register. Subscribe by calling (319) 824-6958 or clicking here.