It’s been almost a year since the Triumvirate Theatre burned down in February 2021. Since then, donations of love and support have come in the form of property and grant funds to help the theatre rebuild, something that Joe Rizzo has pledged he intends on doing.
At a recent Kenai City Council, Rizzo said that he ran into a slight roadblock, which pushes back the anticipated ground breaking to 2023:
“Almost, for sure, we are not going to be able to break ground by this coming summer. A lot of these large foundations that we’re applying to are going to take some time to consider our proposal. For example, the Murdock Trust who we are asking half a million dollars from told me that they won’t give us an answer on that until April/May at the earliest, probably more like July. So, for capital campaigns, it’s like, we can’t really do anything until we have maximized as many donations as we can get. Our hope is that by September, we’ll pretty much have a really good idea of how close to the $4.7 million dollars we are, which is our target.”
From that point, Rizzo says that he can turn that money over to the architects and engineers:
“…and they can tell us what size building, what this building can look like for the amount of money we’ve been able to raise. So, I think if we can get to the $3 million mark, we can certainly build something, what that will be will be determined by a whole bunch of factors, but the number one is how much are we going to be able to raise between now and September.”
Additionally, Rizzo told council he will be back to ask for an extension on the land donation. He stated that he is hoping to break ground in 2023.
