Town: Playhouse on Track for May 1 Reopening

Shuttered since the onset of COVID-19, New Canaan’s movie theater is on track to reopen around May 1, officials say.

The approximately $8 million renovation of The Playhouse on Elm Street is “going well,” according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann.

“It’s on schedule,” he told members of the Board of Selectmen during an update on the project at their regular meeting Tuesday, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “It’s actually—I don’t want to say it’s ‘ahead’ of schedule, so let’s just say it’s ‘on’ schedule—but we’re feeling we’ll be able to open a little bit earlier than we originally anticipated.”

The town’s contract with its construction company has the project completed May 30-June 1, Mann said, though “right now they’re looking at April 30-May 1.”

The architects on the job are “confident as well” with that date, he said.

“So that’s what we’re gunning towards,” Mann said. “And the fact that we were able to get the elevator in early, that was a huge boon as far as it goes.”

The 1923-built Playhouse has undergone extensive work since it became available to a new tenant in late-2020, when Bow Tie Cinemas terminated its lease. The town this year approved a series of contracts to ready the Playhouse in time for a reopening in 2023—the movie theater’s centennial (the former first selectman during an election run-up two years ago setting an even dreamier goal)—though that date has since been pushed back.

According to Mann, the interior block walls at the cupola-topped building have been completed. 

“And the subflooring on the first and second floors, they’re completed,” Mann said. “And the concrete subfloor for the ramp leading out to the front entrance has been done. The bathroom concrete floors will be installed this week. The electrical service switch and the panels have been installed. The elevator is about 80% complete, so the shaft is done. We’re building the elevator on the inside. We were able to get Otis in, they had an opening in their schedule so we were able to get them in now to take care of that and get that out of the way. That’s usually something that happens at the end, you’re usually waiting for it, usually there’s delays associated with that. And our fire sprinkler system has been installed and it started last week. We also took out all the existing heating, put in temporary heating, that was completed and is running.”

From a revised budget of $7,985,000—double the original estimate—the project currently has expenses encumbered of $7,824,000, Mann said. The Playhouse renovation received $600,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funds—a relatively wise allocation of “ARPA” funds by the town government, which also made some curious and unpopular decisions with the federal money—and it’s getting $2 million in state funding.

The selectmen asked Mann whether the twin theaters will get a modern projector (yes) and whether the town stands to realize any savings with its various contractors (those contracts are locked in under the “design-build” model though officials are mindful of cutting costs or “value engineering”).

Selectman Amy Murphy Carroll asked whether the embedded 10% to 15% contingency within the $8 million project is all to be spent.

Mann said in response, “We’re not utilizing all the contingency. We are utilizing some of it. Originally, they were estimated numbers, that’s correct. We had a certain amount of contingency based in there, but we still have $160,000 left in the overall amount of work.”

Selectman Steve Karl asked whether that figure is “tighter than normal at this point.”

“That seems pretty tight, $160,000 at this point,” he said.

The town’s superintendent of buildings, Bill Oestmann, said in response, “It’s tight, but since it was a design-build, we’ve already worked through a lot of the elements of the project on a real-time basis. As we work through each segment of it, we’re getting pricing as we build it to get to the contracted amount. Right now we’re feeling pretty comfortable with it.”

The selectmen thanked the state legislators and others in Hartford who helped secure some funding for the project. 

“A huge, huge thanks for that to anybody involved that got that $2 million grant, that’s really amazing,” Karl said. “Of all the projects we’ve had in town that needed a little positive boost action boost wise.”

He added, “I know the residents continue to be really excited about this as do all the shop owners in town, they’re all waiting for this thing to get going, so everybody’s excited about it.”