Chatham-Kent is running the Capitol Theatre for now, but they hope to have a new operator sooner rather than later.
The municipality is currently in charge of operations for the facility, but officials say there have been "a number of expressions of interest," to take over operating the Chatham Capitol Theatre. While they won't disclose which groups are interested, or how many there are, administration is developing "requests for proposal" for the associated parties.
"We were surprised by the variety of responses we got," says Chatham-Kent Community Development General Manager Bob Crawford. "That's put us to where we are today, where we are still moving deliberately through this process of identifying the preferred candidate. We're still some ways away from that."
While the municipality has owned the theatre for some time, St. Clair College had been running the day-to-day operations of the space on Chatham's King St. W since 2012. In October 2015, the college announced they'd be ending their ties with the theatre for financial reasons.
College officials had set an initial deadline of March 31, 2016, but Crawford says they reached an agreement to have the college stay until June.
"I spoke with the vice president [Wednesday]. Of his own accord, he suggested going forward if we ever got into a pinch of any kind, they'd be more than happy to step in and lend us a hand, just as good neighbours," says Crawford.
Crawford adds they will take into consideration how costs of internally running the theatre will compare with any potential operating groups. He says there have been no staffing or booking changes as result of the shift in operations.
Right now there is no set deadline for requests for proposal to external groups, but CK administration continues to be in contact with the unnamed proponents that have come forward.