observer
Opera hall may come alive
again in Fair Haven
Third-floor space would host
performances, community events
By STACEY MORRIS
Contributing writer
The Hill Country Observer
FAIR HAVEN, Vt.
David Nelson has big plans for downtown Fair Haven — plans that involve no less than spotlights, curtain calls and plenty of action.
Nelson, who works as an accountant in Rutland and lives in Fair Haven, wants to restore the former Wilson and Grace Opera Hall, a third-floor auditorium that in decades past hosted a variety of performances as well as basketball games.
The hall, which Nelson proposes to reopen as the Fair Haven Opera House, has been silent for 60 years inside a Main Street building that now hosts a coin-operated laundry on its ground floor. Nelson owns the building and two adjoining ones.
The theater offers 4,000 square feet of floor space, including a balcony, and can hold 350 people. But its lack of fixed seating makes it suitable for a wide variety of activities, from square dancing to weddings, Nelson said.
He envisions the Fair Haven Opera House as a new center for the community.
“It’s just a beautiful space that really belongs to public,” Nelson said. “It’s too wonderful a treasure to be sitting there, so I decided to network and see about restoration.”
The theater was built in 1895, and its name changed over the years until it closed in the World War II era, Nelson said he discovered through his research. Its various names all ended with the word "Hall," he said.
“Throughout the years, it was usually named after the people who owned the building at the time," Nelson said.
Once it's renovated, the possible uses of the theater space are many.
“My vision is for a multi-function hall where you could have a country-and-western opry on a Saturday night, a wedding on Sunday morning and fashion show on Sunday night," Nelson said.
Other possibilities include a place for town meetings, one-act plays, movie screenings and a rehearsal space for students, he said.
Under Nelson’s proposal, the opera house would occupy a total of 20,000 square feet, with some of that space in adjoining buildings that would provide a café as well as retail and residential space.
“The support space is on the third floor of the middle building,” he said. “The vision is for a café to be on second floor. It’ll all be on the second and third floors of three continuous buildings on Main Street, so it should make quite an impact on downtown.”
Nelson said the theater’s simple elegance would be retained in the renovation.
“It’s not an ornate theater,” he said. “The interior is functional, not fancy, with some nice woodwork and wainscoting.”
He estimates the renovation will cost $500,000 to $1 million. The plan is to organize the opera house as a nonprofit corporation that could seek grants and donations to pay for the renovation.
“We’re probably talking about a three-year project from start to finish, but maybe we can get something in the short term,” Nelson said. "We’ll be looking for grants, tax stabilizations from the town and donations."
The nonprofit group would control the theater and related spaces, but Nelson would continue to own the remaining spaces in the buildings, such as the ground-floor retail space, and operate those on a for-profit basis.
“I own the building, but I’m going to offer the nonprofit a 99-year lease at a dollar a year,” Nelson explained.
Nelson said he has hired Margaret Wood to serve as manager of the opera house project and has obtained a $5,000 planning grant through Key Bank.
Now he says he's hoping the community will rally around the project by offering support and ideas.
“Hillary Clinton said it takes a village, and it’s going to take a village for this to be successful,” Nelson said. “We’re just trying to prime the pump, but we need to get the town involved and school system involved and people of a like kind vision.”
Renovating the theater and related spaces will involve
* installing an elevator and making other changes to provide access to people with disabilities;
* dealing with fire safety issues such as sprinkler systems and fire escapes; and
* addressing comfort issues, such as by installing a new central air conditioning system.
John Lulek, the chairman of the town Select Board, said the opera house could mean great things economically for downtown, provided a few preliminary steps are taken.
"First we need a downtown designation," he said, explaining that more grants would be available through the state if such a designation were made for the downtown area.
Once the project is complete, it could draw visitors from a wider region, he said.
"This could potentially be like the Paramount movie theater, on a smaller scale," Lulek said.
The Paramount, a theater in downtown Rutland, was restored and reopened as a performing arts center in the late 1990s after standing empty for 20 years.
Lulek acknowledged that the Fair Haven Opera House might not draw so many tourists in the off-season, but he said its use as a community space would be a great benefit year-round.
"It's a beautiful space," Lulek said. "It would be perfect for the high school drama club to use."
Nelson agreed that the opera house could be a key to revitalizing downtown Fair Haven.
“There’s nothing like it in town right now,” he said. “Vermont has spent a lot of time, money and energy to see what makes these older towns come to life economically and socially, and what they’re discovering is arts and entertainment — there’s nothing like it to drive development.”