On a rainy Nov. 4 afternoon, Grove Park residents, public officials and members of the media gathered under a white canopy outside the Grove Park Theater to celebrate the start of its renovation. The building will reopen as the Grove Park Performing & Cultural Arts Center.
Built in 1941, the 85-year-old building has been a movie house, a pawnshop and, soon, a community performing arts center. The Grove Park Foundation has spent the past nine years making that next chapter possible through fundraising and community partnerships.
The foundation didn’t set out to save a theater. It bought the property as part of a larger parcel for the Columbia Canopy apartments, when the building was still a pawnshop. In 2017, once staff realized what they owned, the Fox Theater stepped in to help conduct a historic study, and the idea of an arts center took shape.
According to Leigh Burns, director of community partnerships at the Fox Theater, cineplexes and changes in the movie industry hurt small neighborhood theaters and forced dozens of them to close. She said the Grove Park Theater is the first and only dormant neighborhood theater in the city that the Fox has helped bring back.
“What’s poignant today, for all of us, is that it survived,” said Burns, “and it’s now going to be not only a home for the Grove Park community, but for all Atlantans.”
The celebration also acknowledged a dark history.
“When this theater opened, we were deep in segregation,” said Burns. “White residents sat downstairs, and African American residents sat upstairs.” That history should be highlighted and never understated, she said.
Gavin McGuire, executive director of the Grove Park Foundation and a longtime resident, said the building’s 1941 opening “was also at a time when a lot of my neighbors and residents couldn’t participate in that opportunity.”
“So we’re grateful to see how history’s turned and how we bring truth and power to this building,” he said.
The theater is one of several Grove Park Foundation projects revitalizing the neighborhood. Across the street from the theater are KIPP Woodson Park Academy and the YMCA Early Learning Center, a school and community hub the foundation built in 2020.
“This community was until 20, 30 years ago, really thriving,” said Karen Rose, director of development with the foundation and a longtime resident. “We’ve lost banking services and food services. We were still losing those things 15 years ago.”
The foundation puts the cost of the renovation at roughly $5.1 million, though other reports have placed it as high as $5.5 million. Chick-fil-A and Bank of America each gave $1 million, and the Fox Theater provided three grants totaling $240,000. Invest Atlanta also gave a $1 million grant from the Perry Bolton Tax Allocation District (TAD). TADs, a central tool of Mayor Andre Dickens’ Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative (NRI), direct future growth in property tax revenue back into the area where it’s generated.
Speaking at the event, Dickens said the project shows the NRI at work. “We use our TADs and corridors like this: to reinvest future property tax directly into the very communities that are generating it,” he said.
The foundation chose not to take on a construction loan, said Rose. Borrowing money could have sped up the renovation by five years, but with no debt to repay, the center can rely on rental revenue and grants to keep its community programming affordable.
According to Rose, the building is expected to open in about a year. Some residents are already making plans for it. Saint Claire, a pastor from Bankhead who runs Restoration Studios with the nonprofit Community Renaissance, said the center will serve the young people he mentors in music, podcasting and media.
“We gotta have space for all,” he said, a sentiment that carries added weight in a theater with a segregated past.
“I think it’s very important that we’re being deliberate, to bring back an art space, but one that is genuinely inclusive,” said Rose. “It reflects the equity that we’re committed to. It honors and serves this community, and it’s going to serve all of Atlanta, bringing it back in a way that honors what’s changed for the good.”
