Colony gets huge boost from Ohio Historic Tax Credit worth over $1 million

On Thursday, March 13, Lee Fisher and the Ohio Department of Development announced that the Colony Theatre had been approved for the Ohio Historic Preservation Tax Credit. This award will provide the Colony with credits equal to 25% of the restoration project cost. We estimate that this will result in over $1 million toward construction of the Colony Theatre.

Although there is still much work to do and money to be raised, we believe this makes the difference in allowing us to move forward on the entire construction package in a single construction cycle. We hope to assemble our tax credit package and start construction within six months.

In order to begin construction on a fully finished Broadway caliber theatre, we will still need to identify our New Markets Tax Credit investor and raise $1 million from the public and private sectors, but we believe this will be much easier with the state credit in place.

In any scenario we have secured the funding necessary to address the code compliance and safety items allowing us to open the doors of the theatre and begin programming.

We want to say a special thank you to all our past contributors. You have brought the project where it is today and provided the foundation, allowing us to capture the Ohio Historic Credit. You should be proud that whether your contribution was $25 or $2,500 or $25,000, your support helped us secure $1 million from the state. We have been able to take the $1 million of private contributions and leverage $1 million in public funding, $2 million in Historic Tax Credits, and possibly another $1 million in New Market Tax Credits.

For those who are not familiar with the Ohio Historic Tax Credit application process, this was an extremely competitive and complicated process. This was a brand new program in Ohio and there were many uncertainties in the application process. We are extremely pleased that we were 1 of 37 projects in all of Ohio and 1 of 5 small-town projects that were approved.

We thank the Ohio Department of Development and are eager to put this money to good use for the benefit of Marietta and southeast Ohio.

Hunt Brawley, J.D.
Development Director
and the Board of Directors of the H.C.H.T.A