The Historic Air Ball Rouvre Rouvre after a more renovation
Sam Summers bought the Val air room in 2022 and renovated it, keeping the historic feeling of space but bringing them in modern times.
- Ingersoll Theater, managed by VenuWorks, aims to reopen on Thanksgiving weekend with Renee Crowell as executive director.
- Max Wellman and Napoleon Douglas will direct the programming, offering high -end themed programs, including Blues, R&B, Rock ‘N’ Roll, Comedy and Broadway.
- The theater has received a Grayfield tax credit for its $ 4.7 million renovation project.
Ingersoll Theater aims at its reopening on Thanksgiving weekends and works on booking shows for the new year and Valentine’s Day, said its new executive director.
VenuWorks, based in Ames, which will manage the dinner-theater once its restoration is finished, announced on Thursday, June 18, that Renee Crowell will serve as executive director of the theater. She has retail training, but recently managed a 10,000 -seat music place now closed in the Pennsylvania Poconos.
His team will include familiar faces of monks. Max Wellman, an entrepreneur and musician which has and performs at the Jazz Club Downtown weddingand Napoleon Douglas, an interpreter and regular actor of the wedding and artistic director for the Pyramid Theater Co., The only Iowa black theater group, will direct the program for the first season of the theater.
In an interview, Crowell said she hoped to hold a sweet reopening of the theater in mid-November and could plan a large opening around Thanksgiving.
“Everything is fluid because of construction times and things like that,” she said. “So it’s not yet in stone, but we reserve for holiday season shows.”
Wellman says that entertainment will be high -end and on the theme
Built like a cinema in 1939, the theater has long been a benchmark in the Ingersoll commercial district, appearing in “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid”, the childhood memories of the 1950s and 60s Bill BYSONNow 73, author of the bestseller “A walk in the woods.”
The distinctive decorative place in decoration started a 26 -year -old race as theater in 1978. A number of other short -term tenants followed before the theater closed in 2014.
Connor Delaney Bought the damaged building.And a large renovation started earlier this year. Venuworks, specializing in the restoration of historic theaters, manages it when the renovations are finished.
Wellman said Douglas was his best friend since high school and that they were trying to extend their business together.
The shows of the Ingersoll theater will include a wider variety of shows than the jazz and the wedding cabaret. All will be high -end and targeted to adults, and could present blues, R&B, rock ‘n’ roll, comedy and even Broadway artists, said Wellman.
“We mix local work musicians with regional and national acts to create unique shows instead,” he said. “Ingersoll will be an extended opportunity to do so because it is not such a niche project compared to wedding. … We will seek to capitalize on what we consider as local and regional stars which could have very permanent commitments to Ingersoll.”
Theater shows will be “immersive,” said Wellman. Food will complete performance, with menus adapted to specific shows, he said.
“It will be delicious offers of food and craft cocktails,” he said. “We have a New Orleans evening on which we work. There are about 12 initial concepts on which we work within the framework of the initial deployment.”
Profit from the state investment theater
In October The $ 4.7 million project received a Grayfield tax credit of $ 450,000 targeting projects that redevelop vacancies, destroyed, underused or damaged by the environment. He also received a historic tax credit of $ 728,000.
Wellman said the night performance of rock, blues and Americana at the neighboring Greenwood Lounge, which shares a wall with Ingersoll, will not disturb shows in the theater.
“The architectural team is very experienced and feels good in their plans in space,” said Wellman. “We are therefore not worried about sound bleeding or anything else. Overall, the neighborhood could not have been more favorable to this point.”
Wellman grew up in Engersoll’s houses of houses and planned to renovate it 12 years ago before opening wedding. While the Delaney project began, the CEO of Venuworks, Steve Peters, contacted Wellman, who said that he and Douglas could not refuse the possibility of helping to bring the Ingersoll.
The reopening of historical theaters is important for the city, said Wellman, noting the renovation of the West Historical Air Ballroom, which reopened in 2024 After a renovation of $ 14.5 million. .
“It is a complicated community for the arts,” he said. “It is a place that strikes above its weight. … What you see in spaces like wedding and now Ingersoll is ideally a space that is economically viable to know where people earn money and also offer an excellent professional environment so that people can live shows.”
(This article has been modified to correct information on state aid to the project.)
Philip Joens covers retail and real estate for the monks register. It can be contacted at 515-284-8184 or pjoens@cartermedia.com.