Q&A: What's next for the Sandusky State Theatre?

SANDUSKY — Two weeks later, and the destruction of a storied structure in downtown Sandusky still traumatizes Chris Parthemore. "It's hard to walk into the theater and not be shocked by what you see," said Parthemore, the Sandusky State Theatre's executive director. "The damage is just so catastrophic. We are still open to the elements." From atop the balcony, Parthemore looked out onto a ravaged theater and an auditorium in ruins, both destroyed from a straight-line wind storm on June 10. In the following days, Parthemore announced, and the theater's board then doubled down, to rebuild this landmark venue, debuting in 1928. Parthemore invited the Register inside for a tour of the mangled site. He also provided an update on construction-related activities: Q: Since the storm destroyed the theater, what has happened? CP: The first step was to bring in a structural engineer to see how much of the building was salvageable and to make a plan to shore up what we have and to protect all the contents that we still have and assess how large of a project the rebuild is. We started with an environmental test, checking for hazardous chemicals. Once they (fully) know what they're dealing with, they can start shoring up the wall, doing selective demolition and cordoning off the rest of the building so we can protect what the storm didn't take. Q: What has been achieved in the past two weeks? CP: One of the huge problems that we had the night of the event was that we took on a lot of water. So, right now, the basement is getting cleared out. They managed to get the water out, but there was so much water that we are having to pull up the floorboards and get underneath everything and make sure all the water is out of every space. We don't want to end up with a situation where, two months from now, we have a bunch of mold and have to get that taken care of. Q: Has the theater's board set any benchmarks to achieve within a certain time frame? CP: We don't really have any benchmarks at this point other than our main concern is to get the building cordoned off and protect the eastern side of the building as quickly as possible. After we have that taken care of, and we get demolition going, we want to be able to create a space where we can keep working all winter. I don't know what that will look like yet. This will be selective demolition. It'll be guys in buckets, cutting pieces out and making sure we have all the pieces so that we can put the auditorium back the way it was. Q: Is there a timeline — One year? Two years? 10 years? — to finish the work and re-debut the theater? CP: No. Our main concern is we just want to make sure it's done right. We don't necessarily have to say, "We need to be open by this day," but there's going to be a lot of decisions to make. It's a historic landmark, and there are so many detailed little pieces. It's such a specialized building that we just want to be careful and deliberate and make sure that we are making the right decisions. Q: How much will this cost? Does insurance cover the work? If so, up to what amount? CP: We have no idea on cost yet. It's going to take quite a while to come up with a cost estimate. Once demolition is over, we are going to have to bring in a theater architect and work through the cost. We are insured, and that is going to play a big role in rebuilding the theater, but we want to keep in mind, as well, that, if there are things in addition to rebuilding that we want to be able to have, it's going to take raising some funds and community support to be able to do that. A good example is the stage. A 1928 vaudeville house wasn't meant to have a Broadway performance. So when we bring in our Broadway national tours, you can tell it's a little bit cramped on stage, and that is something that we can re-examine as we are doing this and see if there is a little bit more room. Q: What positives can result from something so negative? CP: This is going to be our opportunity for reimagining. For as long as I have been affiliated with the theater, we have always had the wishlists — "What if somebody won the lottery and could do whatever we wanted here to make it a little bit easier to have a show?" — so that we can attract bigger and better shows for Sandusky. Q: What else can you be optimistic about? CP: Our board has done a very good job restructuring itself and getting us prepared to tackle this new phase where our operations are something completely different than putting on a show. We are just diving in headfirst into the project to try to get the theater back online. The public support has been tremendous. It's really appreciated. It's nice to know how much everybody values the theater and its role in Sandusky.