UPDATED: Court Square Theater to close Dec. 31 | Arts And Entertainment

Arts Council of the Valley, a Harrisonburg-based nonprofit that sponsors the arts in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County, announced that it would cease operations at Court Square Theater effective Dec. 31.

The Arts Council’s board of directors voted to shutter the theater due to the loss of local government funding since the COVID-19 pandemic and declining audience turnout.

Austin Sachs, board president of ACV, said investment from local governments decreased drastically over the past few years.

“We appreciate the many current demands on financial resources from the City and County; we are grateful for the support they are still able to provide,” Sachs said. “In the years since the pandemic, ACV has experienced substantially diminished funding from local governments. Since the 2020 fiscal year, we have lost a combined total of $371,450 from what had previously been level funding from the City and County.”

In addition, with audiences for films and live events shrinking across the country, Sachs said it was only a matter of time before the situation became unfavorable for Court Square Theater. While a grant from the U.S. Small Business Administration provided some relief, the Arts Council had to turn to its reserve funds to keep the theater open once the grant funding was spent — a business model Sachs described as “unsustainable.”

“We finally reached the point where continuing to operate the theater would possibly endanger the core mission of ACV – to cultivate the arts, create experiences, and connect communities,” Sachs said. “That is what brought us to this extremely difficult decision.”

Jenny Burden, executive director for ACV, said the world has changed since the theater opened 27 years ago.

“We’ve been trying to make it work for a few years, since the pandemic,” Burden said. “It’s been a struggle, but we kept thinking that if we change up our programming, if we bring back the movies, or put them all on one day, that we could perhaps bring back the audiences that came in the pre-pandemic years. But the funding that we needed just to operate — that is what we’ve lost since 2020. We couldn’t keep depleting our reserves to operate the theater.”

While the Arts Council had funding to cover programming such as films and live events, and adjusted the theater’s schedule several times to compensate for limited funds, it was still challenging to find enough money to cover day-to-day operations, Burden said.

Even ACV’s annual fundraiser didn’t bring in enough to keep the theater open, she explained.

“One problem with a theater our size, at least that we found is, with 260 seats, that is a relatively small size, at least for most performers,” Burden said. “And if you want to get the performers to come, you have to pay them, and their prices have gone up over the past couple of years. We can’t charge a ticket price high enough – we could cover the performer, but not the overhead of the theater.”

While community members have been expressing their surprise on social media since the announcement Thursday night, Burden said the troubles that led to the difficult decision weren’t new. While ACV’s board considered a public appeal for funding, the members ultimately concluded that it wouldn’t be able to raise enough money to keep the theater open for more than a few months.

Burden said this was based on a combination of local economic climates and recent fundraising results. In late November and early December, ACV held its annual fundraising campaign and sent thousands of emails urging donations as funding from local government decreased. However, the campaign still failed to raise enough to save the theater.

Burden said it would cost about $140,000 to $175,000 per year to keep the theater running with the current programming, including live music, theater productions, Wednesday night movies, and more.

The theater, initially managed by Harrisonburg Redevelopment and Housing Authority and city staff, was opened in 1998 to support local performing arts. ACV, which was established in 2000 to support all forms of art in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County, later took over the theater.

In addition to closing the theater, Burden said the Arts Council is preparing several internal cost-cutting measures to stabilize its finances. However, she said these are unlikely to affect ACV’s other programs, such as the Advancing the Arts grant series, First Fridays of the Valley, public art, and Smith House Galleries.

“It wasn’t sustainable the way we did it,” Burden said. “That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be under some other leader, or a group of people. I’m really hoping that someone else, or a group of people, will take up the mantle and get that theater going, because we love that theater. We did not want to do this. But we don’t have the resources to even conduct a survey now, and maintain our other programs.”