![]() ![]() Now, 27 years later, the cultural center’s Executive Director Sid Williams-Heath is working to perform an encore. Nonetheless, the funding came flowing in over a six-year span, and the Pensacola Little Theatre’s opening show, "The Wizard of Oz," debuted in the sparkling new, 480-seat theater in February of 1996. The renovation was a huge success, leading to the center opening debt-free and tripling the building’s value. View Gallery: Pensacola Cultural Center & Pensacola Little Theatre renovation plans “People had to really have an imagination,” Cosby teased. ![]() Since there was not much to show for the space aside from loosely sketched renderings, they were selling a dream. Mary Lou Cosby would give tours of the old jail house to potential donors “when it was in shambles.” Her husband at the time, prestigious Pensacola surgeon Brad Pyle, who was then president of the Pensacola Little Theatre Board, brought her along with him as he lobbied statewide for funding. “It was such an enormous job, but we didn’t know it at the time.” “It was a shell,” Dave Clark, Pensacola Cultural Center board member, said of the building’s condition at the time. The project would take at least $3 million in capital, a handful of bank loans, a massive overhaul of the 1911 neo-classical building and a brand-new cultural center board championing the mission. When the deed to the old Escambia County jail and courthouse was handed over to the aspirin g Pensacola Cultural Center in 1988 - its gallows still intact for public hangings - people questioned how such a monumental renovation would ever be completed. "We think it's very important that the Clark Family Cultural Center, as they're going to name it, will be the center of the city.Watch Video: Pensacola Cultural Center: Then, Now, & Future | VIDEO "It will offer a view of the city at night in one direction and the water in the other direction," Clark said. So you've got all of this culture that's just permanently surrounding you."Ĭlark said the rooftop experience will add something unique to the city. ![]() ![]() "Or maybe you're just there to have a beverage and a good view, and suddenly you've got a live musician, a piano player or a guitar player. "Maybe you're there to see a show, maybe you're not, but the show is live streaming up there," Williams-Heath said. Want to stay up to date on the latest news? Click here to subscribe to pnj.com. The lounge will be open to the public, Williams-Heath said, and will provide a place where people can enjoy a cocktail while appreciating whatever is happening at the cultural center. The renovations will include new seats and lighting in the theater, as well as improvements to the theater's atrium, including a full-time bar, the addition of a fine arts gallery and the construction of a roof-top lounge. The building owned by the Pensacola Little Theatre also hosts organizations like Ballet Pensacola, West Florida Literary Federation and Liberty Church and such events as Pensacon, EntreCon, CivicCon and the Stamped LGBTQ Film Festival.ĭave and Cynthia Clark present the Pensacola Cultural Center with a $1 million check. Pensacola offers many, many things, but the arts are very important, especially when we have theater and dance and religious services in the theater." "That's why people like to go to New York or Chicago or San Francisco, it's the arts and it's a lot of other things, too, of course. "In bigger cities, everything revolves around the arts," Clark said. Pensacola Little Theatre moved to its current home at the cultural center in the 1990s when the county donated the old jail and court of records building to the theater company.ĭave Clark has been on the board of the cultural center since 1995 and said his family felt it was important to step up to donate to the center to support the arts in Pensacola. Williams-Heath said he's grateful the community has rallied behind the theater for so long to support the arts, and now that donors are stepping forward, the experience has been moving. Sid Williams-Heath, executive director of the Pensacola Little Theatre, told the News Journal that the $1 million gift, along with other donations totaling $500,000, gets the theater halfway toward its goal of $3 million. ![]()
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