City of Cranston seriously considering purchase of historic Park Theatre. Here's why.

CRANSTON – Unless Hurricane Lee intervenes, the historic Park Theatre will host a day of extremes on Sunday, beginning with an "ABBA Drag Brunch" in the morning ("The Drag Queens are back!") and ending with a "Get Fired Up!" talk by Donald Trump's onetime national security adviser, retired Gen. Michael T. Flynn, a Rhode Island native.

But that's not all that potentially lies ahead for the century-old theater acquired by former Cranston City Councilman Ed Brady and a partner two years ago, which is now $34,135 in arrears on its city taxes and sewer fees.

The mayor's chief of staff, Anthony Moretti, on Tuesday confirmed that the city is seriously considering a purchase and redesign of the building for use as a community center/performance venue, using Cranston's anticipated $6 million share of the $81.7 million in federal dollars that Gov. Dan McKee has earmarked for communities that sign his "Learn365RI Municipal Compact."

Cranston is one of the 31 cities and towns that signed the McKee "compact," committing them to "Invest in existing or new community learning programs, centers and/or libraries that will help advance the goal of improving educational outcomes."

With an Oct. 10 deadline to apply, Moretti said city leaders – including the council president, the school superintendent and the head of the local community action agency – have, after looking at multiple potential sites, narrowed the options to the Park Theatre and the Arlington Elementary School, which is destined for potential retirement when a new school building opens.

What does this mean for the Park Theatre, a city landmark entwined in the memories of many a Cranstonian?

Moretti said the city has asked a Warwick-based construction company – EW Burman – to work up an estimate on how much it might cost to convert parts of the building into a "community center."

Among the potential uses: daytime use of the offices for health monitoring and other social service programs; the conversion of the fully operational kitchen into a culinary arts teaching site, and the retention of the theater as a performance venue and potential job-training site for stage management and other theater arts.

Moretti said it's "all speculative" right now, but the Oct. 10 application deadline doesn't give the city much time to seek community input, so the administration is currently putting together a survey to gauge what residents would like to see.

Take a look inside: This piece of Providence history just sold for $4.3 million.

The Park started out as a movie theater in the 1920s

After starting out as a movie theater, it morphed into a performance hall that, at one time, featured big names, including the Beach Boys, Dr. John, Buddy Guy, Michael Bolton, George Thorogood and Graham Nash.

Restaurateurs Ed Brady and Jeff Quinlan purchased the Park from former owner Piyush Patel in late 2021. Quinlan said they paid about $3 million for the property and put another $500,000 into renovations. The two are partners in Dig In Dining Group, which owns a group of restaurants throughout Rhode Island.

In November 2022, when The Journal last checked in, the building had just rebounded from a flood in the main theater after intense rainstorms that September. The theater reopened in mid-October, right after the birth of Brady’s first child.

At that point, the 50,000-square-foot building included the Park Place Café, the Comedy Park and the Rolfe Supper Club on the second floor. But the heart of the enterprise was then – and remains – the 1,015-seat theater.

City ownership would take the Park Theatre property - currently assessed at $3.46 million - off the tax rolls, but Moretti on Tuesday suggested a partnership with a production company that would use the building at night for performances, to bring in revenue to compensate the city for the lost taxes.

"A community center by day, a potential theater by night," he said, citing the rental of the municipal ice rink as an analogy. He even mentioned one of Brady's early dreams for the Park: "a potential partnership with Theatre By The Sea."

But it remains to be seen whether this is the direction the city will go with its coveted share of the money for "out of school learning opportunities" that McKee said he views as the key to improving "educational outcomes" in Rhode Island.

“If we're going to catch up with our neighboring states and recover from the impact of the pandemic, we know there must be additional learning time outside of the traditional school day,” McKee said again recently, when his office announced that 31 cities and towns had signed on, as a prerequisite for getting a share of the $81.7 million.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Park Theatre in Cranston may be bought by city for afterschool program