Organizers are closing in on the $27 million needed to restore the former vaudeville house on Suffolk Street.
The interior of the Victory Theatre, where 28-foot-tall murals by New York artist Vincent Maragliotti flank the stage. The Massachusetts Independent Festival of the Arts received a $4,500 grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation to restore the murals. Photo taken in April 2010.HOLYOKE – Skeptics might do a double-take, but organizers are closing in on the $27 million needed to restore the Victory Theatre.
As of last week, $19.5 million of the restoration funds had been secured in fund-raising donations, tax credits and grants, said Donald T. Sanders, executive artistic director of the Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts, the nonprofit organization that owns the theater.
Another fund-raising campaign will get underway for the remaining $7.5 million for the theater at 81-89 Suffolk St., he said last week.
The $27 million is a daunting goal, he said, but organizers have never doubted it could be reached or that the project was worthy.
“It is an expression of the deep affection and passion that the public has for a reopened Victory Theatre,” Sanders said.
The most recent fund-raising campaign produced $500,000. That netted the organization $240,000 in matching funds from the Greater Holyoke Foundation Inc., Sanders said.
The foundation controled $240,000, which is the amount left from the $450,000 raised to renovate the Victory Theatre through a 1987 exhibition here of paintings (Rembrandt, Van Gogh) owned by billionaire Armand Hammer.
The rest of the Armand Hammer exhibit money was spent in the 1980s and 1990s to fix the roof, remove asbestos, board up the building and draw up plans, Sanders said.
Since April 2010, the state has granted $1.2 million in historic tax credits toward the renovation of the theater.
Another fund-raising step the organization is using is the New Markets Tax Credit program the federal government established in 2000. In return for investing in distressed, low-income-area projects, investors get tax credits that total 39 percent of the cost of their investment claimed over a seven-year period.
Tax credits are a funding mechanism in which the credits are sold to investors. Proceeds from the sale are used to help in paying for a project.
The Victory Theatre is a dust-and-plaster-covered, water-damaged showhouse. But it has signs of grandeur still evident that suggest that a restoration will return a gem to downtown, from its marble floors and art deco flourishes to giant murals and mahogany walls.
It opened in 1919, closed in 1979 and is on track to reopen Dec. 30, 2012, Sanders said.
The City Council in September 2009 voted 14-0 to sell the Victory Theatre to the Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts for $1,500. Councilors said they did so because the organization had a detailed plan and showed passion for the project.