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Groundbreaking at Highlands PAC
Written By: Luke Osteen | Issue: Whats News
The Highlands Performing Arts Center, located at 507 Chestnut Street, embarks upon a new project laden with promise and possibilities.
Left to Right:
Jeanne Mullin: Highlands Playhouse Board; Craig Eister: Highlands Cashiers Players Board; Brad Armstrong: Building Committee (no hard hat); Charlotte Muir: PAC Board; Mary Adair Trumbly: PAC Executive Director; Martha Pearson: Highlands Cashiers Chamber Music Festival Board; Jane Webb: PAC Board; Rick Trevathan: PAC Board; Geri Coleman: PAC Board; Wade Coleman: Building Committee Chair; John Eastman: PAC Board
The Highlands Performing Arts Center took an enormous step into the future with the July 29 groundbreaking of a vast expansion of its Chestnut Street location.
“This marks an expansion of live theater and entertainment possibilities here on the Plateau,” said PAC Executive Director Mary Adair Trumbly as she and PAC Board Members and representatives of the local artistic community donned hardhats and wielded golden shovels before a bare lot adorned with construction equipment.
“We are working with JLL and Choate Construction out of Atlanta,” said Trumbly. “We met twice a month for over a year with everyone in the meetings: The project management, the construction company, the architects, the designers, the theatrical company. Everyone heard all the questions and solved all the concerns together.
“This all started at a PAC Board retreat in August 2015 after Mayor Pat Taylor wrote an article about a dream of having all the performing arts under one roof. Which meant a new theater.
“And here we are today with the groundbreaking of Phase 2…the theater. (Phase 1 was the Laurel Street parking lot with the water drainage and retention and the underground conduits.) It is an exciting time for the plateau.”
Scheduled to open in June 2022, the new PAC will feature a 300-seat theater and serve as the new home of Highlands Playhouse, which’ll be leaving its Oak Street home of 80 years. The new building will feature a fly system, something unavailable to the Playhouse staff at the current location. This will allow the Playhouse to put on a wider variety of shows and gives the PAC wider latitude in choosing live acts to perform on its stage.
If you’d like to keep up with the project and the promises that it offers to audiences, visit highlandspac on Facebook, or check in with us at thelaurelmagazine.com or, of course, pick up the latest copy of Laurel.
