Theatre Cedar Rapids launches capital campaign to maximize building space

Cedar Rapids — Theatre Cedar Rapids is poised to pop on the outside as well as the inside.

The new “Dream Here, Do Here” $9.5 million capital campaign not only will transform the downtown building’s interior during the 2025-26 season — adding lobby elevator access to all floors and creating more performance, classroom and public spaces — but also will recreate the giant ear of corn sign that for nearly 40 years beckoned audiences to the corner of First Avenue and Third Street SE.

“This is going to be a signature legacy of Cedar Rapids for decades to come,” said Katie Hallman of Cedar Rapids, the theater’s executive director. “People are going to travel from all over the place to take selfies with this thing.”

It also mirrors the building’s art nouveau design aesthetics, incorporating plants and elements of nature inside and out. Everything from new carpet to color choices will reflect ties to the land.

“This building needs to articulate what it means to grow,” she said. “This is a place you can dream and do. This is a place where our community comes to grow. We are a theater for the masses. That is what we do. We introduce a love of theater, and we nurture a lifelong engagement with the performing arts.”

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And in its quest to grow, Theatre Cedar Rapids has outgrown the spaces currently in use. According to capital campaign literature, about half the building remains unseen and underutilized. The renovations, in partnership with OPN Architects and Ryan Companies, will more than double the space used for rehearsals, classes and community gatherings.

Corn sign

When theater employees were reworking offices in recent years, trying to accommodate more staff members on the second floor, they discovered two corn sign repair renderings, done to scale and mounted on heavy paper about 3 feet tall. Each bore a Nesper Sign stamp, dated 1963.

One is a “pretty picture” done in artist’s chalk to “sell” the project, said Phil Garland of Cedar Rapids, Nesper Sign’s president. The other is a more detailed drawing showing the sign’s working parts.

Both were created to facilitate rewiring the iconic sign — work that never happened. The fate of the 1928 lighted steel structure — removed after RKO sold the theater to Dubinsky Brothers in late 1965 — remains unknown. Some reports in Gazette archives speculate it ended up on a scrap heap. Another thought is that it may not have been sturdy enough to make an overhaul feasible.

At a glance

What: Theatre Cedar Rapids “Dream Here, Do Here” $9.5 million capital campaign

Raised to date: $6,156,250 or 65 percent of the goal

Construction dates: August 2025 to April 2026

Renovation highlights: Connecting all spaces on each floor; new elevator access from basement to fourth floor; new rehearsal, classroom, performance and gathering spaces; update carpet, flooring, paint; wider auditorium seats; new Iowa corn sign on the corner of First Avenue and Third Street SE

By the numbers: Largest nonprofit producing theater company in Iowa, with more than 50,000 visitors each year; FY25 projected annual income $3.7 million; 50 weeks per year with rehearsals, shows and classes; serves more than 70 communities reaching more than 75 miles

Project fundraising and details: tcrnext100.org/#campaign-priorities

But with Nesper and the theater both turning 100 next year, the timing felt right to bring back a beloved piece of the past. The new structure will measure 32 feet long and 9 feet wide, adorned with 492 yellow and 634 LED light bulbs, as well as 400 feet of green LED tubing that will mimic neon. The new shell will be aluminum, which won’t rust the way the original steel frame did, Garland said.

The sign “is always something that’s been talked about,” Hallman said. “We’re excited to have our corner of First Avenue illuminated in the spring of 2026.”

It’s been the talk of the town, too, for years.

“When I would be at a Rotary meeting, or Kiwanis, or just out in the public, there's usually two or three signs that people would ask about — maybe the Paramount Theatre and Quaker Oats, and then this corn sign would come up,” Garland said.

His artisans are eager to get started, as soon as the theater has the funding in place. That’s happening at a quickening pace.

The theater’s “quiet phase” of the campaign has raised $6,156,250 — or 65 percent of the goal, Hallman said. The pledges have come primarily from community sources.

“We’ve had commitments from the city and (Linn) County, the Hall-Perrine Foundation, which has been wonderful,” she said. “And then we have some upcoming state partnerships that we’re looking forward to.”

Public and private donations are needed to further the campaign, with work expected to start in August 2025 and end in April 2026.

“We will have a season,” Hallman said, but the 2025-26 programming will be shuffled. Instead of beginning with a fall main stage production, the auditorium will reopen for a holiday show in 2025. The lower-level Grandon black-box theater will be closed for most of that season, she added, since the basement will be torn up for elevator work.

“We’ll backload the Grandon activities into the spring and summer (in 2026),” she said.

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Inside scene

Every floor of the 50,000-square foot 1928 Iowa Theatre Building, fully owned by Theatre Cedar Rapids since the 2008 flood, will see some form of transformation, from the basement housing the Grandon Studio, dressing rooms and kitchenette to the fourth floor, which will house a rehearsal studio and classroom space, in addition to the administrative and production offices already in place.

The key is connecting spaces in floors that don’t align. Hallman said a common practice in the 1920s was to build an auditorium in the center, wrapped by other offices and auxiliary spaces in an L shape, where the floors require steps up or down to connect. That makes smooth access no easy feat.

But access is going to become easier.

The days of an awkward elevator entrance halfway down the block will be history, too. A new elevator will be accessible from the theater’s ground-level lobby, all the way up to the fourth floor and down to the basement. This not only will accommodate audience members, but will make the playing spaces, dressing rooms and backstage areas accessible for all abilities.

Level 2 will be dedicated to a dance studio and office space. But the auditorium’s balcony can’t be connected to the elevator, so accessible seating will remain on the auditorium’s main floor. And all auditorium seating is being replaced with wider seats, which will reduce audience capacity from 550 to 520 but make it more comfortable.

Another comfort enhancement is a sensory area in the back of the lobby, for anyone needing a break. This calming space will feature furniture designed to surround patrons of any age, and a TV screen where they can see what’s happening in the auditorium.

“It’s not an ‘othering’ space, it’s an intentional one,” Hallman said. “ … Because right now, if you need to step out, it just doesn’t feel like there’s anywhere that you’re supposed to go.”

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The third floor, once home to the second balcony, has been walled off and used for rehearsals and classes for years. This rather austere area will be turned into a public gathering and rehearsal hall; a youth studio; performer lounge; and breakout studio.

The theater has simply run out of space, Hallman said. Since the 1980s, classes have been held in hallways, the lobby, the Linge Lounge and anywhere else students and teachers can carve out a nook.

The renovations “are going to unlock just a lot of unused space in our building and make it so that it is usable space for things like classrooms,” said Mic Evans, of Cedar Rapids, and the theater’s education director. “Will we still have to share spaces? Absolutely, but the renovations are being done with education in mind, and not being done just with rehearsal halls in mind, because the space needs are different.

“So for us, it’ll mean that spaces are more accessible to every student. It’ll mean that every space is a blank slate; that we’ll have flat floors and not a lot of elevations; that they’re all clean and safe; and that education has been in the forefront of the renovation and design process, as well.”

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It also will allow for year-round educational programming, instead of once-a-month classes and summer camps.

“Right now the primary focus on nights and weekends is supporting what’s happening on our main stage,” he said. “Once we unlock the building, it just becomes a free-for-all, for education to move into spaces and be able to offer classes safely and in a way that makes sense for students and teachers alike, as we go forward.”

Evans also steps into the other side of the theater, as a performer and director, and is excited about the opportunities for new and better use of rehearsal times. Small groups will be able move to different sites for specific music, dance and scene work. He’s also looking forward to the revamped basement dressing rooms and cast and crew amenities.

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Community use

Transforming the building not only expands possibilities for programming, but for community use, too. Right now, it’s hard to schedule outside groups wanting to use the auditorium, Linge Lounge and other spaces for meetings, performances and receptions.

“We’re going to be able to say ‘yes’ to the community more,” Hallman said. “We’re a community-driven organization. We don’t have room to say ‘yes’ to community members who need rehearsal space; it’s very rare, or it’s shoehorned in. Now we can actually have a plan and a process, because we’re going to have articulated spaces that actually serve well.”

It won’t happen in an instant.

“We have to take care of our organization first, in order to be able to care for any others,” Hallman said. “And so there are growing pains with that. We have to formalize how people use the space. This is a real medium-sized business in our community. …

“There’s a lot of process work we have to do in order to protect the asset and make sure that we’re ready to go, ready to serve people.”

Murphy McGrath, treasurer for the theater’s board of directors and a capital campaign co-chair, has a vested interest in seeing the theater poised for the future. His grandparents, the late David and Audrey Linge, gifted the theater portion of the building to the Cedar Rapids Community Theatre in 1983. The organization changed its name to Theatre Cedar Rapids by the 1988-89 season, to reflect its growth beyond the realm of the smaller-scale community theater it had been.

He grew up coming to shows there, and as an adult, has taken an improv theater class, which reeled him back into the scene when he returned to Cedar Rapids after college.

“It’s a really compelling project,” McGrath said. “I thought it was great for Theatre Cedar Rapids, of course. It’s solving some of the issues that have presented to us since the ’80s, when the building was first donated. So it allows us to take the building — which used to have retail on the exterior, and then the theater on the interior — and make it all usable space and create a true arts center for Cedar Rapids. …

“The upgrades to Theatre Cedar Rapids overall are fantastic. I think the patrons will feel it, the performers will feel it, the students will feel it, and then the community will feel it, as well. It’s just such a gem of our community. And we're coming up on our 100th year,” he said. “It all really aligns perfectly on giving the theater the space that it deserves.”

Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com