Save The Palace

05/03/2019

The Palace Theatre has been sold & saved! http://www.mysaline.com/palace-purchase-resolution/

05/02/2019

It's been forever since any updates have occurred here, but someone put in an offer to the city of Benton today to purchase The Palace. There is a special meeting set for Thursday night to discuss the matter.

Palace Theater Gets Purchase Offer; Benton City Council to Hold Special Meeting May 2nd to Discuss May 1, 2019 By Shelli Poole Leave a Comment Benton Mayor Tom Farmer has called a special meeting of the Benton City Council to be held at 6:00 p.m., Thursday, May 2, 2019, in Council Chambers at the Be...

09/29/2018

I sent this question to the top 3 candidates for Mayor of Benton on 9/27.
My question is simple, the city owns the Palace Theatre, which also served as the city auditorium and city hall. It was then the Panther den which provided as safe space for youth and the Saline County Library for almost 50 years. The current administration chose to ignore the past history and the potential positive impact it could have on the downtown. What is your position on this historic building?

I will post the results in the comments.

03/30/2018

I had hoped to wait until the next election to get the new mayor and new city council member that realized importance of saving the Palace Theater and other historical buildings. Getting someone that is actually able to sit down and discuss options to save this beautiful and historic buildings and understand the economic impart to the city if the Palace is open for business. The current mayor and city council have done a good job at showing a good public concerns while never following through. They approved $175,000 to help restore the building but never met with a group like ours in who would work with them to develop plans with the funds available. Instead the city refuses to look at alternatives. During the last financial committee meeting Alderman Steve Lee attempted to once again promote demolition of the Palace by bringing the subject up during a finance committee meeting. He continues to bring up inaccurate facts concerning the stability of the building and never mentions efforts to save the building. We will be monitoring this carefully since his actions did not make it out of the committee. During the upcoming elections we will need to vet out city council members and mayoral candidates for there their view on historical landmarks.

08/15/2017

The Historic Theater Conference was a great gathering of people who share the same passion about history that we do. 28 of the 52 historic theaters in Arkansas were represented. It was great to hear all the success stories they have had and confirmed that we are on the right path to being successful if we can get past the first hurdle, which is the city. The city tends to focus on what could go wrong and at the same time cities of Morrilton, Eureka Springs, El Dorado, Hot Springs, Conway and others are embracing their theaters and are expressing their gratitude about what their theaters have done to revitalize their downtown's. I was surprised at how many cities actually own the theaters and give long term leases to non profits to run them, wouldn't that be nice. I spoke with the mayors of both Eureka Springs and Morrilton and they couldn't say enough about the economic impact they have seen from their theaters. Now we just need to find a way to convince city officials that what other cities have found as beneficial economic resource can benefit Benton as well. Can you imagine if downtown Benton was able to stay open on evenings because of events held at thew Palace drew people back to the downtown area, it would be wonderful.

08/08/2017

Less than 2 days until the Historic Theatre Conference, while I am expecting to learn a great deal from the speakers and other small town Theater owners. I still wonder how we can convince the city to let go and let us save the Palace. How do we get past the Catch 22 where we cannot apply for grants since we don't have ownership and satisfy the city we can get them. I really hope the answer to that comes this week.

07/23/2017

Excited to be attending the Historical Theater Conference in August. We hope to learn a lot from this and get some insight from others on how they went about saving their Theater. Looks like a great lineup of speakers and an opportunity to meet those who successfully saved and restored theaters in towns across Arkansas. Now if we can only get the city of Benton to see the light of the importance of saving historical buildings.

01/26/2017

We are still waiting on a decision from the city about the Palace, it is extremely frustrating having to wait. We have offered to work with the city on numerous occasions to save the building to no avail. I have to say that we have learned a lot over the last two years of how the city actually works. Through countless meetings we have attended, it has become more and more apparent how dysfunctional the city is. We have witnessed this not only by the way our group has been treated but in seeing the facts that the word negotiate is not even in the vocabulary of our city leaders. I have seen that what they consider the best deal in their bidding process bears no resemblance to reality. I can imagine that many restaurants would die for $750,000 thousand dollars in kitchen equipment to use but that is what they paid for the equipment in the River Center. $20,000 to put a tarp over the Palace and it lasted only 6 months. When asked why it cost so much and why they didn't have any warranty the city simply responded that this was the best deal and they didn't ask for a guarantee on what they paid for. We continue to hope that some how the city is able to somehow see the benefit the city would receive in bringing more activity to our great downtown by saving the Palace.

11/24/2016

Today was the original date for the city to open the bids for the repairs for the Palace Theatre. That date has been postponed to December 7th. which is good. They have 6 contractors bidding on the project which should result in really good bid numbers. I was sent a copy of the bid package and I have to say Black Corley and Hughes did an excellent job in preparing it. Very detailed on what needs to be done and a step by step plan of how it needs to be done. It included the complete engineers report that shows that other than the roof the city failed to maintained, the building is great shape. They certainly don't build them like this anymore. If anyone would like to see the report I can send them the link. We need to keep the pressure on the city and make sure they don't do an end around on this. Unless the bid opening is delayed I will post the bid results Dec 7th. Also if you know of someone who can help us gear up on the grant process, please let us know.

11/02/2016

If you know of a contractor or construction company willing to work with us on Saving the Palace please let us know. This city is looking for bids, check their website, or contact us.

11/02/2016

In case some of you might have missed it, we changed the date for the meeting. It will now be on Monday November 7th 7:00 pm at the Saline Courier.