Community theater coming to Main Street

The curtain has closed on the Fort Mill Community Playhouse’s longtime home, but will soon go up in a new venue right in the heart of downtown.

The playhouse, which has been looking for a new base since the Banks Street facility it turned into a theater more than a dozen years ago went on the market, is setting up inside the historic former City Hall building at 218-220 Main Street. Originally the National Bank of Fort Mill when it was built in the 1920s, it’s one of the oldest buildings on Main Street.

One contrast with the theater troupe’s former space on Banks Street is an abundance of room in the two-story building.

“There’s lots of space upstairs,” said Mary Roberts, FMCP secretary and board member.

“There’s a lot more room, which is great because if you have people (rehearsing) on the stage, you can have other people upstairs rehearsing or blocking and you can do all those things simultaneously.”

Roberts said the architecture is an added bonus.

“As soon as I walked in, I said it’s so much better. It has so much character and it seems so much more like what you think about when you think ‘theater,’ ” she said.

The Playhouse had been in the building on Banks Street for 13 years, paying just $1 rent annually to property owner Leroy Springs and Co., which gave the Playhouse a full year to find a new site.

Now they are leasing on a year-to-year basis from Kanawha Properties of York County, Inc. Property manager Michael Chase, a lifelong Fort Mill resident, said he sees the arrangement as boon for Main Street and the downtown area. Bringing up popular restaurants Hobo’s and Local Dish, Chase, who said 218-220 Main had been vacant for nearly a year, sees the theater as one more in a growing list of downtown destinations.

“We’re always excited to have a building on Main Street occupied,” he said.

“It used to be that there were no restaurants in Fort Mill and now you have two viable, excellent restaurants on Main Street and both are thriving. We just had the Fort Mill History Museum (on nearby Clebourne Street) basically move to Main Street and this could all be an economic and social hub, we think.”

Roberts, an Indian Land resident, agrees.

“That was one of the things we were excited about – pumping life into Main Street,” she said. “I think it goes hand-in-hand as far as tourism. And it’s so cute! Fort Mill’s so cute!”

The FMCP’s first production in the theater will be the musical “The Honky Tonk Angels,” directed by Polly Adkins, opening March 3.

This story was originally published January 8, 2016 at 4:02 PM with the headline "Community theater coming to Main Street."