Who Cares About the Arts? Loveland Does.

As we witness arts budgets being ripped to pieces like gift wrapping on Christmas morning--only without any present inside--it’s gratifying to hear about a community that is doing bold and visionary work to support the arts.

Like Loveland’s 2012 creation of the Rialto Theater Center.

Photo: Michelle Standiford

The original Rialto Theater in downtown Loveland opened as a vaudeville house in 1920 and thrived as a movie theater for decades before its eventual decline into a mini shopping mall in the 1970s. In the 1980s the City of Loveland began restoration of the building and secured its designation as a National Historic Place. With the help of major fundraising and volunteer labor, the Rialto opened in 1996 as a 446-seat, Art Deco gem with modern sound and lighting equipment. Since then the Rialto has maintained a busy schedule ranging from local theater groups and choruses to national touring musicians, independent and silent films, meetings, and school functions.

“The theater was wonderful, but it didn’t have support spaces,” says Rich Harris, Rialto Theater Manager, explaining that the dressing room was a cramped space with low headroom under the stage and there was no room for offices or classrooms.

“I’ve worked at the Boulder Theatre and the Fox, and they they all have this same challenge,” Harris says. “It is a great credit to the City of Loveland that they decided to fix that problem. They took the building adjoining the Rialto, demolished it, and built a three-story building designed for beautiful support services for the theater.”

The new building, dubbed the Rialto Theater Center, is a joint venture between the City of Loveland; the Rialto Bridge, LLC; and the Community Foundation of Northern Colorado.

The bottom floor is leased to a restaurant in partnership with the city. “The 1919 building and the 2012 building interconnect,” Harris says. “When we want to serve alcohol, we just open up the window between the two.”

The middle floor contains beautiful, modern dressing rooms; meeting rooms; and workshop rooms for arts and education and children’s programs.  The rooms are equipped with slide-down projection screens and all-new audio systems. The top floor is being leased to a communications company.

“It’s very sophisticated,” Harris says. “The Rialto has gone from being a stand-alone theater to a small arts complex. This whole project was visionary.”