One of the broken seats that will be repaired using the grant funds.

TIFTON — The Tift Theatre for the Performing Arts was recently awarded a $77,027 grant from The Fox Theatre Institute to repair and restore the interior seating.

The Tift Theatre opened in 1937 as a movie house and was revamped as a performing arts venue several decades ago.

Kaylee Stokes, acting business manager for the Tift Theatre, said that the seats are 30 to 40 years old and have not been properly maintained or restored since they were put in.

“They are not the original seats, but they are around 40 years old,” she said. “They were actually installed when the theatre was transformed into the performing center instead of the cinema house.

“(The grant’s) priority is restoring old theaters and maintaining them, and so we’re not allowed to just replace the seats,” she said.

They are very glad to be able to fix and reupholster the seats, she said, adding that there are several broken seats that are not able to be used.

“We want to be able to do bigger concerts and bigger performances. We want to be able to use the space to its capacity, which we’re not able to do at this time because of the broken seats.”

Stokes said that they have bigger name concerts that would like to come to Tifton and perform, but they can’t because they have broken seats.

According to the Fox Theatre Institute, the grant to Tift Theatre is FTI’s largest single-amount grant awarded in the history of the program.

Stokes said that the grant will not completely cover the cost of having the seats restored, but that the City of Tifton is going to pay the remainder of the estimated $150,000 project budget.

Bids have already been submitted for the project but Stokes said there hasn’t been a decision on who the project will be awarded to.

The project will kick off in early January 2018 and is supposed to be completed by June 1. Stokes said that the project will be done in sections so the theatre can remain open for events and rentals during the project except for during the entire month of May.

The Tift Theatre is one of 13 grant recipients of the 2017-18 Historic Preservation, Historic Structure Studies or Planning and Technical Assistance and Service grants.

These grants allow Georgia’s historic theaters or structures to receive much needed financial assistance, restoration support and operations mentoring.

“It is such an honor to support these historic theaters beyond the much needed financial assistance,” said Leigh Burns, director of the Fox Theatre Institute. “It is unlike any other, in that it is solely invested in preserving theaters and structures to ensure a positive economic development. I’m excited to see how these organizations will serve as a catalyst to positively impact the financial revenue of the surrounding community as well as grow access to the performing arts.”

For more information, please visit www.FoxTheatreInstitute.org.

Follow Eve Guevara on Twitter @EveGuevaraTTG.