FAIRBORN — The Fairborn Theatre, located on Broad Street, is not going anywhere anytime soon, according to city officials who said the theatre means as much to them as it does to citizens.
“The building is as important to us as it is to residents,” Fairborn Community Development Director Michael Gebhart said. “Our charter was signed there — it’s huge to us, it’s huge to city council, it’s huge to the city manager and to all the employees — it’s an icon … We’ve all got history there.”
No active plans are currently in the works to tear down or revamp the theatre, but city officials said the most ideal situation would include reusing the facility.
That possibility may become a reality in the future, but it is currently too early to say for certain.
“We want to see it reused,” Gebhart said. “We’re actively talking to a couple people, but it is in the infancy stage and I don’t know (at this time) if anything will pan out — but there are no active plans to do anything to that building besides replace the glass window … We’re going to keep working on trying to get that building reused.”
A strong wind that came along from a recent storm took out a window on the facility. Due to the window not being made of tempered glass, a dangerous “splintering” was created across the window surface, calling city code enforcement employees to remove the shards to eliminate any safety concerns. By the time the glass was removed, another window was ordered to serve as a replacement.
However, the replacement window was broken by the supplier before it ever made it into the window frame. Although it could be fixed as early as this week.
“Because that window was so big, our supplier didn’t have it in stock,” Gebhart said. “It came in a week later and they broke it. For the size of the window, it takes every crew member they have [to install it].”
