The curtain is rising on a quiet but determined backstage effort to transform a historic downtown West Chester building into an exciting theatrical venue for both live and film productions.

Already five years in the making, the nonprofit volunteer Uptown! Entertainment Alliance is about to step into the spotlight if it can clear a strategic cultural district rezoning and then buy North High Street’s nearly century-old National Guard Armory. Without going public with the idea, the group has already raised $2.2 million of the $3.75 million needed, according to a Daily Local News report last week.

“The idea that this came from four friends and we’ve now raised $2 million for it says something powerful about the idea and the concept,” Development Director Angela Scully said in the article. “It’s so clear that there is a need for this. It’s such a unique opportunity to take this building and really recreate that community space.”

UEA anticipates securing the necessary approvals by July and then jumping right into a ready-to-go restoration phase that is expected to last nine months.

“How appropriate if we open our doors as a theater in 2016,” Treasurer Richard May said. “It would be 100 years. It just has some sort of special synchronicity about it.”

The initial target for restoration work is to leverage some for-profit investment to obtain historic tax credits and upgrade to current building code standards.

“The goal is we want people to walk in here and really feel like the space is beautiful with great acoustics and really comfortable seats,” President Tom McEvoy said in the article. “That’s where we’re putting our money first. People who are designing the acoustics and our lighting are one of the leading theatrical design people in the world. That part will be fantastic.”

The rest will come later.

Read more about how UEA started, where it’s come and what it envisions for the future in the Daily Local News here.

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Top Photo via UptownWestchester.org