Fascinate-U expansion to force Gilbert Theater to move. How the Gilbert got $250K to help

Paul Woolverton, Fayetteville Observer
·4 min read

For the fourth time in its 29-year history, Fayetteville’s Gilbert Theater needs to find a new home.

But this time, the community theater has a few years to relocate, instead of a matter of weeks or months. And it is about to receive $250,000 in taxpayer money to help pay for the move.

The theater will have to leave its space on the second floor of the Fascinate-U children’s museum because Fascinate-U plans in the next several years to expand its exhibits to the second floor, said museum Executive Director Amanda Jekel.

Children get their picture taken with a Minion at the Fascinate-U museum in Fayetteville in August 2015. The museum in 2023 has plans to grow and expand its offerings.
Children get their picture taken with a Minion at the Fascinate-U museum in Fayetteville in August 2015. The museum in 2023 has plans to grow and expand its offerings.

Eventually, after that, she said, the museum will expand to its third floor, where the Cape Fear Railroaders model railroad club meets and has extensive train layouts.

Fascinate-U’s building is the former Fayetteville City Hall on Green Street by the Market House. The city still owns the building and leases it to Fascinate-U, which in turn subleases the upper floors to the theater and the model railroad club, Jekel said.

The building opened in 1941 and served as City Hall from then until 1990 when Fayetteville opened its current City Hall a few blocks away on Hay Street.

Fascinate-U opened in 1995 in a community center in Tokay Park off Ramsey Street. The museum moved into its Green Street building in 1998.

James Dawkins of the Cape Fear Railroaders model train club sets up a train engine on the tracks in April 2010 in the club's clubhouse in the Fascinate-U museum in downtown Fayetteville.
James Dawkins of the Cape Fear Railroaders model train club sets up a train engine on the tracks in April 2010 in the club's clubhouse in the Fascinate-U museum in downtown Fayetteville.

Museum expansion to reach more students

Fascinate-U does programs for elementary school-age students, but its exhibits are oriented toward first grade and younger, Jekel said.

She wants to add exhibits for the older kids.

“Our second floor would hopefully follow a little bit closer to the North Carolina curriculum for schools so that it would be able to enhance what they’re learning in their classroom a little bit further,” she said.

The museum would have to raise money for this growth, Jekel said.

“Everything would happen in phases,” she said. “We don’t have any immediate dates for when we would expand up.” The expansion is a goal in the museum’s strategic plan, she said.

The Gilbert Theater’s cast of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, with the theater’s founding Artistic Director Lynn Pryer at the center, in October 2023.
The Gilbert Theater’s cast of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, with the theater’s founding Artistic Director Lynn Pryer at the center, in October 2023.

Theater asked for a grant, a lawmaker delivered

The Gilbert Theater’s $250,000 grant was part of the $30 billion state budget that the North Carolina General Assembly approved in September.

It appears to be the largest single financial contribution in the theater’s 29-year history, according to Lawrence Carlisle III and founder Lynn Pryer.

“This was all at the generosity of Diane Wheatley,” Carlisle said. Wheatley is one of Fayetteville and Cumberland County’s lawmakers in the state House of Representatives.

Carlisle said he met Wheatley, a Republican from the Linden area in northern Cumberland County, during Arts Day at the General Assembly, in April when people from arts organizations across the state went to the legislature in Raleigh to lobby for arts programs.

“She asked me, ‘I can put in a budget request for you, for the Gilbert. What do you need?’” Carlisle said. He told her the theater may need to move, and she asked how much the theater needed, he said.

The Gilbert money is a line item among 1,437 pages of budget documents. The budget became law on Oct. 3.

Stage moves from a basement to the City Council chamber

The Gilbert Theater has grown a devoted following in its 29 years. It also has moved three times before.

Pryer, the founding artistic director, opened the Gilbert in 1994 as a small black-box venue in his basement on Brandts Lane in Fayetteville’s Haymount area.

He named the theater after the Marquis de Lafayette, the French man who helped fight the American Revolutionary War and for whom Fayetteville is named in honor of. Lafayette’s full name was Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette.

But a theater in a residential area runs afoul of the city’s zoning code. Following a complaint to the city from a neighbor about cars parking along the narrow street and blocking driveways, in 2002 the theater briefly moved its performances to the Pate Room of the Cumberland County Public Library downtown.

Then it spent three years in the Arts Center on Hay Street — headquarters of the Arts Council of Fayetteville | Cumberland County — before finding a more suitable theater space in 2006 on the second floor of the Fascinate-U building. The auditorium is the former City Council chamber.

The Gilbert’s opening show in its new home in fall 2006 was "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." Seventeen years later, the Gilbert is again staging Rocky Horror.

Carlisle said the shows have been selling out.

Senior North Carolina reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at 910-261-4710 and pwoolverton@fayobserver.com.

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Museum expansion requires Fayetteville NC theater to seek a new home