Alongside a thriving restaurant scene, the hub of entertainment in many small towns in America is a local theater.

In Chester County, West Chester, with its just-debuted Knauer Performing Arts Center, joins Phoenixville and its legendary show hall, the Colonial Theatre, on the map for a great night out, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer report by Alan Heavens.

Knauer just celebrated its New Year’s Eve grand opening, the culmination of six years of painstaking progress by the Uptown! Entertainment Alliance toward finding a home and converting the borough’s old armory building into an entertainment epicenter. Knauer now hosts eight resident theater companies, and boasts an aggressive first year of programming.

Meanwhile, the 1903-built Colonial Theatre has been the anchor around which Phoenixville’s downtown revival has rallied.

“The place made famous by the late-1950s sci-fi cult classic The Blob didn’t have much in the way of other nightlife at first, but since then, the area — Bridge Street, in particular — has come a long way,” the article stated.

Nearly a dozen restaurants now complement the Colonial’s ongoing schedule of independent and classic films and live shows.

Read more about local theatres’ roles as prime entertainment attractions in small towns in the Philadelphia Inquirer here.