Close to the Edge

Cooperation could raise curtain

By Scott Spielman

For more than two decades, the Historic Wayne Theater has been in a controversial spot in the City of Wayne.

Once a main downtown attraction, it has been vacant and fallen into disrepair along the most prominent part of downtown—Michigan Avenue.

Thousands of motorists speed by—and I do mean speed by—it every day. It kind of symbolized the city, a once proud place that has fallen on hard times and is slowly working its way back.

Who knows, maybe it’s been in that shape for so long that the passing drivers don’t even notice it anymore, even with the message on the sign.

I hope that’s not the case for long.

Once again talk has surfaced about returning the theater to its glory days. Usually it comes up every autumn as the volunteer board that oversees the 501©3 non-profit organization puts on another haunted theater fundraiser to chip away at the vast expense needed to restore the structure.

This effort, however, seems to have a little more gumption behind it. There is talk of not only bringing the theater back, but also promoting a theater district in the city. There is talk about what will happen once the theater is open, a definitive timeline put in place, too.

Will the people pushing this effort be able to pull it off? Will they be able to break ground in September for their major renovation project and have it open by April?

To be honest, I don’t know. I am, however, cautiously optimistic, and for several good reasons.

First the effort is more organized now than I’ve seen it in my three years covering the community. There was always nice rhetoric about the place, what it was and what it could be again, but that was about the extent of it.

Now, with the return of Don Nicholson, who was involved in the effort more than 20 years ago and left essentially out of frustration, those efforts seemed to have crystallized a little more.

I still have some doubt if he can pull it off. He’s a busy guy, for one thing, with a lot of irons in the proverbial fire, and this is a monstrous task he’s heading up.

What factors into my cautious optimism is the simple fact that he knows this. His estimates of what it will cost—upwards of $1.5 million—seem to mesh with those familiar projects of that scope. He’s got a plan and he’s diligently working with it.

Another thing that gives me encouragement is the state of cooperation between the theater group, the chamber of commerce and the city itself. It would be easy to take the opposite approach—if I received an order telling me that the building I’ve worked so hard on for decades, a structure so stable that it could probably survive any kind of earthquake, was a dangerous building and needed to be torn down, I don’t know how I would respond.

I think that’s the key, in fact, the cooperation I’ve seen. There’s only one way this project will ever come to fruition, and that’s if we all work together to force it to happen.

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