Nick Wilkinson
The Tivoli Foundation is proceeding with a $57 million project to renovate the Tivoli Theatre and build the new Tivoli Performing Arts Center next door in the former Fowler Brothers building, Nick Wilkinson, executive director of the Tivoli Theatre Foundation said Thursday. He said $23 million has been raised to date and tax credits will help in funding the project.
It is set to reopen in 2024.
Mr. Wilkinson also told members of the Rotary Club that the new center will include an educational outreach arm and a new, fourth venue, the Bobby Stone Theatre.
“We’re very excited about this new venue and what it will allow us to have,” Mr. Wilkinson said.
The Bobby Stone Theatre is named after a founding board member, a filmmaker, and funded by the Bobby Stone Foundation. The 250-seat venue’s retracting seats mean the space can be adapted for classes, rehearsals and other uses.
He said the project was responsible for creating 404 full-time equivalent positions in 2022, and is on track to create 759 for 2025 upon reopening.
Mr. Wilkinson said that as River City Company, the Lyndhurst Foundation and others begin to focus on the future of Broad Street, the performing arts center will be the “lynchpin piece” bringing riverfront Chattanooga and Southside together in the city center.
“We hope this is a shot in the arm,” he said.
The Tivoli’s educational outreach will include performing arts, technical training and theatre direction. The Tivoli is a member of the Broadway League and will focus on bringing Broadway shows to Chattanooga. Its classes and events will revolve around the shows it brings. The Tivoli Foundation has pledged that 50 percent of participants will come from low-income and minority backgrounds.
“There are far too many people in our community who do not have access to the arts,” Mr. Wilkinson said.
Tivoli Theatre restrooms and concessions spaces will be completely re-done and expanded into the former Fowler Brothers building. There will be ground-floor retail and a rooftop bar, a “holistic and comprehensive experience,” Mr. Wilkinson said.
Local groups studied the Orpheum Theatre in Memphis and the Tennessee Theatre in Knoxville to set the Tivoli on its new trajectory.
“Why can’t we have that in Chattanooga?” Mr. Wilkinson asked.
The energy and momentum of this “renovations and reimagining” of the Tivoli are a belated celebration of the “Jewel of the South’s” first centennial in March 2021, he said.
The Tivoli Foundation was formed in 2015 to separate the theatre from the city. Then it was losing $1.5 million a year. In 2022 it generated $25 million in direct expenditures. Before 2015 the Tivoli had 20 acts a year. Now it has shows “every other day,” the speaker said.
Mr. Wilkinson said 26 percent of the stage calendar is taken by local nonprofits including Chattanooga Ballet, the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera and the Chattanooga Boys Choir.
At first people said Chattanooga’s not a music town, Mr. Wilkinson said.
“I can literally say we’ve turned that script 100 percent,” he said. The shows he attracts reflect Chattanooga’s diverse population and tastes, he said.
Shows may move year to year from the smallest Walker Theatre, which seats about 850, through the Tivoli, which seats 1,750, to Memorial Auditorium, which seats 3,800.
Mr. Wilkinson said that now that the Tivoli group has established a good footing, “It’s time to polish the Jewel.”
Tivoli Theatre opened March 19, 1921 as a “picture palace” with tickets for 25 cents. It was designed and built by Rapp and Rapp and R.H. Hunt and was among the first five public buildings in the country to have air conditioning. It was saved from razing in the 1960s and 1970s by the Lyndhurst Foundation and other local philanthropists.
The Tivoli was last restored in 1989, re-opening with a Peter, Paul and Mary concert.
The Tivoli’s Wurlitzer organ will be preserved and restored. That organ and the Austin organ at Memorial Auditorium, named Opus 1206, are two of only about 300 in existence, Mr. Wilkinson said.