Paul Dunlap, owner of the iconic Bay Theatre, told the Sun this week that he’s 99 percent sure the plans for the design of the Main Street movie house will be complete this week. He said he hoped to be able to share the plans later this week.
Dunlap said work crews were almost done with work on the inside of the theater. He said the inside of the theater would be considerably changed. The rows will be arched, as they would be in a performance theater. There will also be an orchestra pit.
He said they would try to make everything else about the Bay Theatre the way it was in 1946.
Dunlap said there will be 385 permanent seats and space for another 30 temporary seats in the theater. He said there had been some issues with the “ingress and egress” for the Bay Theatre, but Dunlap believes those have been resolved.
As passers by can see, exterior work is continuing on the old movie house, which been closed since August 2012. Dunlap bought the Bay in 2016. In November 2016, the Sun reported that Dunlap had an agreement with Chase Bank to provide parking. In early 2017, he said he expected the planning of the renovation to take six months and construction another six months.
In January 2018, Dunlap said he expected reconstruction of the iconic landmark to be finished in December of 2018 or shortly after that.
