ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 4, 1996 TAG: 9612040019
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: PULASKI
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
Future plans for use of the former Pulaski Theatre building are being shaped by responses to more than 1,000 questionnaires mailed to a random selection of Pulaski County residents by Friends of the Pulaski Theatre Ltd.
The survey was an early step taken by a newly hired consultant on the theater project, Cargill Associates of Fort Worth, Texas, the same consultant used by Abingdon's Barter Theatre in its recent renovation and expansion.
The completed questionnaires were to be mailed back by the end of November. Questions ranged from how respondents are willing to support the project financially and with volunteer time, and what they thought about such possibilities as combining the theater project with the Pulaski-based Fine Arts Center for the New River Valley.
But the survey is not the only activity under way since the Friends group reorganized and began a renewed push to save the theater.
The consultant has already interviewed some 60 community and civic leaders about their ideas for the theater. The firm will give the Friends group a report by the end of the year and identify potential leaders for fund raising and other activities.
Additional copies of the surveys have been available at libraries in Pulaski and Dublin for those who did not receive one and would like to complete it.
"We've got a new roof going on," said Bob Henderson, one of the early workers in the Friends organization. "We had to have that. We had to get a new roof on before winter or, by the end of the year, we wouldn't have a building to save."
The building belongs to Pulaski County. It was given to the county when it closed as a theater in 1991. The Friends organized at that time and became the county's agent to try to salvage the building as a community center.
After several years, the effort seemed to have bogged down. But the organization got a jump-start in recent months with new officers including Randy Eley as president, B.D. Bolt as vice president, Beckie Ann Gunn as secretary and Pamela Chitwood, treasurer.
The C.E. Richardson Foundation has released half of a previously approved $30,000 grant for the project. The $15,000 will go toward the $31,000 roof project, with the Friends putting up the balance.
The building was originally called the Elks Theatre when it was built in 1911, as a vaudeville house for concerts and traveling productions.
It was converted to retail use in the late 1920s or early 1930s as the Dix-Richardson Store, and became the Pulaski Theatre in the late 1930s. It continued showing movies until it closed six years ago.
The Friends group has argued that it could attract visitors as a historic building, and serve as a civic center, a place for performing arts, concerts or musical events, lectures, live theater productions , films and other activities.
LENGTH: Medium: 57 linesby CNB