The enemy is money
Editorial
Those who want to save the Historic Wayne Theater have opened the doors to city inspectors today.
The goal of the tour is to give the volunteers some idea of the kind of repairs they need to make to bring the facility up to code—and therefore have it taken off the Dangerous Building list. It’s the first solid step toward the preservation of the theater and a needed one if it is ever to see viable use again.
So far in this process, everyone has done the right thing. Granted, that has mostly been talking—although volunteers at the theater have done a good job of sprucing up the interior and making what minor repairs they could.
Still, the communication is a positive sign. The folks on the theater side say they want to work with the city, get things in order and have the theater open within a year. They’ve got fundraisers planned, a marketing campaign all but set to go and people interested in moving in already.
The discussion has been just as encouraging, on the surface, from the city perspective. City officials have said they want to work with the Historic Theater Board of Directors to clear up the issues at the 70-year-old structure on Michigan Avenue.
They suggested the tour as the first step in that cooperation. At the same time, though, they warn that they’ve heard it all before and they’re tired of empty promises.
Because it is far easier to work with the volunteers than against them, we hope this spirit of cooperation continues. If it does, there may be hope for the aging structure, after all.
It still won’t be an easy job, though. Even if city officials and theater volunteers cooperate fully, the preservationists have a huge undertaking ahead of them. Their biggest obstacle won’t be resistance on the part of city officials, it will be finding the money to do what they need to do.
It’s difficult to tell exactly how much the preservation effort will cost. It will probably still be difficult to get a handle on those expenses even after the walk through. Everybody knows it won’t be cheap, though. One of the things that will be needed is a sprinkler system, and those are expensive. The city just approved a bid for a system at the Wayne Historical Museum—which could probably fit on the stage of the theater—and it cost nearly $50,000.
The biggest advantage the theater people have to work with is the structure. They should get used to giving tours to perspective revenue sources, for it is virtually impossible to stand inside there and not feel the potential singing from the aging walls.