Winnipeg’s historic Pantages Theatre gets $15M from province to become performing arts centre
Winnipeg’s Pantages Playhouse Theatre, shuttered since 2018, is getting a $15-million injection from the Manitoba government to turn it into a performing arts centre.
The funding will bring the historic theatre “back to life,” said Premier Wab Kinew.
“This is a tremendous project to advance arts and culture in Winnipeg and across Manitoba, but it’s also a big investment in our downtown. When there’s a great group of people advancing a project like this, it’s easy to say yes to that kind of investment.”
The 112-year-old Exchange District landmark at the corner of Market Avenue and Main Street was managed by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra from 2011 until it closed up in 2018, due in part to extensive structural renovations it needed and funding challenges for redevelopment.
The renovation project is a collaboration between the Performing Arts Consortium, which bought it in 2020, and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra as its managing tenant.
The newly renamed Pantages Playhouse Arts Centre will be “acoustically refined” for orchestral concerts, jazz and acoustic performances, a Tuesday news release from the province stated.
Designed by Number Ten Architectural Group, renovations will include stage upgrades, wider seating, updated backstage facilities for a broader range of users and new administrative offices for the symphony.
WSO executive director Angela Birdsell said the tentative timeline to open is 2029. The $62-million project is just starting the “detailed design drawing phase.”
The group previously received money from “a very small group of donors” in the private sector as well as the City of Winnipeg — $87,500 for 2024 and $250,000 annually from 2025-27. It is now turning to what Birdsell calls the “last frontier of public sector funding” — the federal government.
“We have a very ambitious ask in front of the federal government right now,” she said of the $22-million request.
“This is a shovel-ready project, it’s a community-significant project, and it’s going to be a creative hub.”
The federal support would bring fundraising to 80 per cent of the target, “and we’ll be going back to the private sector to complete our goal, which will be somewhere in the vicinity of another $15 million,” Birdsell said.
‘Cultural landmark’
Pantages, which was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in the 1980s, is “a cultural landmark and a piece of Manitoba’s history,” provincial Culture and Heritage Minister Nellie Kennedy said Tuesday.
The new funding “will help modernize the facility while preserving the heritage features that makes it so incredibly special.”
During its heydey, the theatre was part of a chain founded by Alexander Pantages, a prominent American promoter.
The stage hosted famous acts including Buster Keaton and Stan Laurel (before Laurel and Hardy), and featured what’s been called the first jazz concert in Canada, when the Creole Band of New Orleans played in 1914.
After vaudeville died out, the city took over ownership in the 1930s for tax arrears and renamed it the Pantages Playhouse.
It remained an important stop for performers, including Ella Fitzgerald. The Royal Winnipeg Ballet performed there from 1940 until 1967, when the neighbouring Manitoba Centennial Concert Hall was built.
The Performing Arts Consortium assumed responsibility for its management in 1998, until the city agreed to sell it for $530,000 to two businessmen in 2019.
After that deal was held up and then renegotiated, the businessmen agreed in July 2020 to offload the theatre and sell it for $1 to the consortium, which promised to raise $10-$15 million to restore it and install a management team to operate it.
“This project has been a lot of years in the making — more years than I would have liked to have seen,” said Curt Vossen, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s board chair.
“But it’s here today in a very material way,” and “we’re going to go forward with great resolve and focus to see … [it] to its conclusion,” said Vossen.
“To allow it to slip from us would be a tragedy.”
The hope is to see the theatre booked for “250 to 300-plus days and nights a year,” he said.
“We want to be a material part of downtown revitalization. We want to reanimate this corner.”
In the last year Pantages Playhouse was operating, more than 75 community and professional groups used the venue over 150 dates, the WSO’s Birdsell said, including dance school recitals, theatre and comedy shows, and musical performances.
“None of them are coming downtown anymore. So we want to open up our arms and our doors,” she said.
Heritage Winnipeg executive director Cindy Tugwell said she is “absolutely thrilled” by Tuesday’s announcement about “an iconic and significant heritage building in the cultural district.”
Pantages represents a time at the turn of the 20th century, when Winnipeg was growing quickly and the importance of culture was evident, she said.
“Our amazing and unique built heritage stands as a reminder to embrace the importance of our history. The greenest building is an existing building.”
The Manitoba government announced $15 million to help revitalize the Pantages Theatre in Winnipeg’s Exchange District. The 112-year-old theatre closed in 2018.
