Long-awaited Ashland theater set to open May 5 with a new name and updated look

Eighty-one years after it was built, Chris Skinner is about ready to reopen Ashland's beloved theater.

"People have been very patient," the venue's executive director said. "People have been waiting on this for five or six years. It closed in 2009."

The entity known as The Ashland Schine's Theatre Organization plans to open the theater at 216 Center St. on May 5.

An exact itinerary for the day's festivities has not been determined, but movie lovers can plan now to watch "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3" on the big screen that night.

Theater will now be called The Ashland

One of the first things Ashlanders will notice as the venue's grand reopening is advertised will be the new name.

"The board actually voted to change the name of the theater," Skinner said. "We're dropping the Schine's part of it."

The stagecrafter extraordinaire explained that most venues throughout the state — in Columbus, the Ohio and Palace theaters both — were once owned by movie houses or other production chains, but later dropped those name affiliations when they were repurposed.

"Same thing goes with Ashland," Skinner said. "When the theater opened up in the '40s, from everything that I've read, people just referred to it as The Ashland. No one said anything about Schine's, so we changed the name legally to just The Ashland."

Decades of theater experience throughout Ohio

Skinner grew up in Hilliard and has been involved with theater most of his life.

"My grandparents and my father and everyone were all very theater and arts oriented," Skinner said.

He went from watching traveling shows as a child to working in a Cinemark Theatre in the 1980s.

Next he worked for the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts, known as CAPA. It was there that he learned under Todd Bemis, who has spent more than four decades caring for Columbus' historic theaters.

He followed Bemis around Columbus as the man restored both the Lincoln Theatre on Long Street and the Drexel Theatre on Main Street.

"I would just go over and kind of check it out," Skinner said. "Ride the coattails and see what was going on."

He later became director of operations for the Ohio Theatre in Columbus, then executive director of the Midland Theatre in Newark.

He took over the Ashland project last summer.

"This was an opportunity I could not pass up," Skinner said.

'An empty bare bones skeleton'

The theater's new director learned its history in a hurry. It was built during WWII. It seated 1,500 people back then.

The venue sat vacant for six years after its 2009 closing before the local organization was formed to take it over in 2015. In the nearly eight years since, donors gave $4 million to salvage the theater.

He was happy to see Ashland's theater had already been preserved by the time he arrived.

"An empty bare bones skeleton," Skinner said. "They had basically stripped the entire building down to the brick and had all been cleaned up."

There was a new roof and all of the electrical and plumbing had already been either repaired or replaced.

The design had already been mostly completed, but was waiting to be implemented.

'You can do a lot with $4 million'

That design, Skinner likes to point out, was as a modern design that was created for a modern city. The project is a renovation.

"There's a difference between a renovation and a restoration," Skinner said.

Restorations return a space to its original appearance when it was built nearly a century earlier. They're generally very expensive. In 2007, when he helped restore the Lincoln Theatre in Columbus, the price tag was $13 million. In today's dollars, that would be nearly $19 million, according to usinflationcalculator.com.

"We didn't have the money to restore this," Skinner said of the Ashland project.

But they did have $4 million, which happens to be a lot for a renovation project.

"You can do a lot with $4 million," Skinner said. "Extraordinary, generous donations from donors throughout Ashland."

The primary function will be as three movie theaters

He took the organization's architectural plan and compared it with what city leaders desired from the space.

"They want this to be a community space, not just a movie theater," Skinner said.

He designed it for five uses: movies, concerts, theatrical productions, community meetings and private events.

The primary function will be as a movie theater. Three movie theaters, to be specific. The main floor can seat 264 viewers. Two smaller areas upstairs seat 50 each.

"The only way we can run a modern movie theater to satisfy Hollywood contracts is by, you know, rotating the movies through," Skinner said. "So the new movie will come in and play on the big screen for a few weeks, then after everybody's seen it, or a new movie comes out, we move it up into one of the smaller theaters."

Dual sound systems for multiple purposes

The venue has two sound systems. The first is a cinema surround sound system for movies. The second is a public address system that will connect to microphones when movies are not being shown.

To accommodate the multipurpose uses, the theater's design needed slightly tweaked. Most notably, the stage was extended 16 feet toward the audience.

"Where I was primarily involved was helping to make sure that all the theatrical aspects are efficient and safe," Skinner said.

Live productions are expected to include plays, musicals and concerts. There will also be speeches, ceremonies and other community events.

"You want to do a wedding in here? We can do a wedding in here," Skinner said. "We can do whatever."

'Top of the line recliner theater seats'

Patrons will be excited to learn that the seats are large with more space than what is typical between them.

"The top of the line recliner theater seats that you can get," Skinner said. "They're wider than what you would find in most other movie theaters."

The rows are spaced further apart than normal for added leg room. There's also either a new row or an end table inserted every four seats to separate groups.

"Generous personal space," Skinner said. "That way you're not sitting all on top of each other."

There will also be table seating in the rear of the house for those who want to quickly access the snack bar.

"Basically popcorn and candy and Pepsi," Skinner said. "We do have beer and wine."

And in just a few weeks, patrons can finally see it all for themselves.

ztuggle@gannett.com

419-564-3508

Twitter: @zachtuggle

This article originally appeared on Ashland Times Gazette: From Schine's to The Ashland, theater gets a new name & updated look