posted 04-29-2002 10:13 PM                    

Anyhow, the restoration of the theater is progressing nicely. The roof was completely redone. The main chandalier has been restored and relit and the 4 smaller one are being worked on. The current major project underway is a complete scratch building (recreation) of the origonal marquee...I believe that this is about a $300,000 or so undertaking!

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posted 05-13-2002 07:54 PM                    

Stratford said he hopes the theatre will open in 2004.

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posted 06-29-2002 04:25 PM                    

At last.
On June 29-barring floods, conflagration or giant asteroid attack-a new Fox sign will once again blaze forth, down on West Congress Street.
The sign, a replica of the one that hung so long outside the venerable movie palace, was installed Saturday.
It joins the theatre's new marquee-also a replica of the origonal-that went up last month.
Both are scheduled to be lighted for the occasion around 8 p.m.
Won't it be grand?
Once, again, the street out front will be roped off for merrymaking, as was done on opening night, April 11, 1930.
Dancers will tap, kids will do rope tricks. Cameras will flash.
But unlike that night 72 years ago, there will be no walk across plush carpeting, no sinking down into Moroccan leather chairs, no curtain parting, no movie flickering on the screen.
Patience, friends, Patience.
Best-casescenario, this century's grand opening of the Fox is still two years away and change away.
So says Herb Stratford, executive Director of the Fox Tucson Theatre Foundation, which owns the building.
Fact of life: When your dealing with the ravages of time-and of the demands of new codes-hang-ups happen.
Take the new sign. Both it and the marquee were supposed to be lit up first of June.
Never happened, owing to the rather inconvient fact that the sign wasn't yet up.
"Were're talking about a 72-year-old building, so we wanted to make sure, obviously, that if you hang a 2000-pound sign on it...it's safe'" said Stratford.
"Before, what held up the sign was this big steel structure that looked like an oil derrik. The city did not want to see that again, so we engineered that it be contained with the building."
Dimmed in 1974 after the theatre closed out its 44-year run, the sign came tumbling down-literally-in Feb. 1986.
Seems that during the dismantling by its then-owners, the sign "fell apart as it was being taken down," according to a story in the Star.
Incidentally, all this occured following a notice from the city that the sign was "no longer up to code."
Oddly, the cost of the new marquee and sign-much of it donated-just about matches the $300,000 (granted, in 1930 dollars) it took to build the Fox. That's chicken feed, of course, compared to the $8.5 million figure now being tossed around as what it's going to take to get this grand old girl kicking again.
To date, about $650,000 has been raised through in-kind donations, with another $1 million in donations and fund-raising, says Stratford.
Add to that a $1 million federal grant that will be used for sprinklers and alarms.
Another $3.5 million should come flowing in as part of the Rio Nuevo redevelopment plan.
So, what are we getting for our money so far?
Well, the roof has been replaced, the main chandalier repaired, cleaned and relit, and close to 15 roll-aways of trash hauled off.
The orchestra pit is being engineered to go up and down, the better to flaunt a 1928 organ console that once held forth at the Brooklyn Paramount.
It and the circa-1922 organ pipes, origonally from the circle Theatre in Indianapolis, were donated, as were moving costs.
"The whole thing filled a 40-foot truck," said Stratford.
Also on the immediate to-do list: cleaning 40 years worth of grime and cigarette smoke off the art deco ceiling and reupholstering every one of the theatre's 1,300 chairs.
By the way, Stratford guesses there could be quite a residue of chewing gum sticking to the undersides of those chairs.
Thankfully, not one wad qualifies as "historic".

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