Regent seat replacement

Interior theatre restoration nears completion

Over the past 14 months the interior of the Regent Theatre has been almost completely restored to its original Art Deco aesthetic. The lobby bar replacement was completed in March 2022. This was followed by the installation of a fully-accessible terrace area, the repainting of the auditorium and the installation of new lighting. This past weekend saw the completion of the floor refurbishment and the installation of new-to-the- Regent seats. Today, Wednesday, the theatre will welcome back the public with a free screening of award-winning filmmaker Tess Girard’s Shelter, in celebration of Canadian National Film Day.

It has been a long process, and Regent Theatre Executive Director Alexandra Seay is grateful to the workers that made it happen, and to the community for its enthusiastic support. The final chapter of seat replacement had its beginning back in 2020 during the campaign to fix the leaky roof. “Over the last many years the floor has been degrading, and part of that has been water damage. We’ve had ceiling leaks and leaking pipes under the auditorium, and recently water incursions on the west side from shifting drainage patterns. We absolutely needed to redo the floor, and so we needed to take all of the existing seats out,” she said. Those seats came to the Regent already used and were now quite old, so replacement was inevitable. The cost of new seats is prohibitively expensive, around $800 to $1,200 each. However, as luck would have it, Seay found a theatre in Quebec that was going out of business and was selling all of its seats. “Of a weekend, I decided to drive to Quebec and check out these seats and, lo and behold, the colour of the seats was an exact match for the colour we had just painted the auditorium. The seats presented an incredible opportunity for us. We got 420 seats at $25 each, and so we leapt at that,” she said. It took two trips by the Bay of Quinte Movers to bring the seats to Picton, and one more trip will be necessary to pick up the spares. The final cost per seat will be almost double the purchase price, after nameplates and cup holders have been installed.

The new floor surface is an epoxy-based layer over the existing concrete floor, which had to be ground to a level finish in areas where it had crumbled. The new layer is impermeable and there are new drains installed in the event of unforeseen water incursions. It has a stippled finish, so that carpet runners will not be required in the two aisles. The project will come in a little over the budget of $50,000 in part because the cost of cup holders has tripled since the original estimate was obtained. A grant from the Huff Family Fund was used for the floor refinishing, and the seats were funded by donations from Herb Pliwischikies and Steve Van Dusen. Seay said the floor and seat replacement took place over a very narrow timeframe. “We could not have done this without the participation of the workers who are doing the build. Everybody pulled out all the stops and made it happen in very short order.”

One of the pleasant surprises of the recent renovation work has been the increased use of the accessible seating terrace. “We are seeing marvellous results from the terrace project. We created 55 flexible seats, with 26 of them fully accessible—meaning a wheelchair, a mobility device, a stroller or anything that could fit there. We are seeing them being used more and more, especially during live concerts as a dancing space,” said Seay. The installation of a velvet curtain on the wall opposite the stage as well as sound baffles on the terrace walls have improved the acoustics in the theatre. The next major project is the renovation of the theatre’s signature marquee. As much as possible, the look of the marquee will be preserved. The first order of business is to replace the backlighting behind the lettering and rewiring the infrastructure. Sadly, there has been vandalism of the neon tubes and lamp fixtures. Some of the neon will be replaced with LED strips, and some will be replaced with new neon. Funds raised during a gala dinner on the Regent stage at the end of February will be used to cover some of the cost. “Restoring the marquee is a top priority. It is a very expensive project and the ballpark figure at the moment is $75,000,” said Seay. The first phase of the project is expected to be complete by September 30, with the full marquee being done in the spring of next year.