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The university signed a 10-year lease with Kleban Properties to create a premier arts and education site at the corner of Post and Unquowa Roads.
Open to the entire Fairfield community, including all university students, the refurbished venue will provide a range of offerings, including high-profile lectures, author talks, unique films, concerts, and performances.
It will showcase the work of the University’s dance, orchestra, band, choir, theater arts, film students and more.
Preliminary plans call for a full-scale renovation of the former movie theater, which opened in 1920 and closed in 2011. T
The landmark theater will have at least 400 seats. Work should be completed in 2020, just in time for the theater’s 100th anniversary.
Kleban will renovate the theater to Sacred Heart’s specifications.
“Once the renovations are complete, we will install the state-of-the-art equipment and accouterments that have come to define Sacred Heart’s new and renovated spaces,” said Mike Kinney, senior vice president for finance at Sacred Heart.
“Kleban Properties will be looking to the town of Fairfield for assistance in various forms to ensure that this exciting opportunity becomes reality,” said Ken Kleban, president of Kleban Properties.
"I am thrilled that the Community Theater, which has long been an iconic landmark in our town filled with special memories for so many of us, will finally be reopened,” said Fairfield First Selectman Mike Tetreau."
"Thank you to Kleban Properties and Sacred Heart University for saving this historic gem that will add to the vibrancy of our downtown and help Fairfield’s arts and cultural scene continue to flourish.”
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