The restored Carolina Theatre holds a special place in Charlotte’s history. But WFAE’s Tommy Tomlinson, in his "On My Mind" commentary, says it’s also a symbol of our potential now and in the future.
I went to the new Carolina Theatre for the first time the other night. It’s spectacular. But I’ll be honest: Until I actually walked through the doors and stepped onto the carpet, I wasn’t 100% sure it was real.
If you’ve lived in Charlotte for a while, you know that for decades the Carolina Theatre was a mirage that never quite came into focus. The old place had a great history — it opened in 1927 and hosted movies and live shows from Elvis to Sinatra to Andy Griffith. “The Sound of Music” played there for 79 weeks straight. It closed in 1978 — the last show there was the Bruce Lee film “Fist of Fury.”
Every few years after that, somebody came up with a new plan to resurrect the Carolina Theatre. Up through the mid-’90s or so, the plans didn’t make that much sense — back then, uptown was so empty after 5 p.m. that you could drive through there blindfolded and not hit a soul. But then people started moving uptown. We put a football stadium and an arena there. Crowds lingered after dark. But the theater still sat there empty, like an old rotten tooth too expensive to fix.
Finally, in 2013, the city sold the building to the Foundation for the Carolinas for $1. It took five more years after that for renovations to begin, and seven more years after that for the theater to reopen. And it feels like the perfect time. The Main Library is being rebuilt one block over from the theater. Uptown life is booming in a way it hasn’t in 50 years.
All of this took money and influence, and some smart and powerful people working together. But beyond that, it took vision and belief. I have to say, at some point I figured I’d never see a new Carolina Theatre. It sounded like one of those political campaign promises that never gets fulfilled.
Now, we have many harder and more important problems to solve in this community. But we still have the collective resources and willpower here to solve those problems. It took nearly 50 years to restore the Carolina Theatre to its glory. But in the end, we turned an eyesore into something beautiful.
Tommy Tomlinson’s On My Mind column runs Mondays on WFAE and WFAE.org. It represents his opinion, not the opinion of WFAE. You can respond to this column in the comments section at wfae.org. You can also email Tommy at ttomlinson@wfae.org
