Newburgh”™s Ritz Theatre was a place to be in the Forties and Fifties.
It”™s where Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz and scores of entertainers traveled to perform and where a host of singers and dancers moved across its stage.
Residents flocked to the grandiose music hall with its 700-plus seats. It served the community for many years, but as the neighborhood started decaying, it eventually turned into a traditional movie theatre before finally closing its doors in the early 1980s.
Since then, the theater”™s neighbor, the former Ritz Hotel, was taken over by Safe Harbors of the Hudson. Where a flophouse overrun with drugs and demons once flourished, it is now 128 affordable supportive housing apartments, where families and artists are now making much better use of the space. Around the corner, the Ann Street Gallery holds a revolving display of art of some of Safe Harbor”™s residents.
Newburgh”™s prospering waterfront is getting the city excited. With a new college preparing to officially open its doors in 2011, the Ritz Theatre hopes to become an integral part of both the students”™ and the community”™s lives.
A $400,000 grant obtained by U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey presented to Safe Harbor”™s executive director, Tricia Haggerty Wenz, will go toward helping the ultimate goal of raising $12 million to restore the theater, creating more than 800 seats and balconies.
“It”™s been a dream since we first took over this property,” said Wenz in an interview in 2008. Inside the darkened theater, you could barely make out where the stage had been, but Wenz had stars in her eyes and a great vision for the old theater and a revitalized Newburgh. “Times are tough,” said Wenz, before the Great Recession had laid into the economy. Wenz hasn”™t lost her belief that the Ritz will rise from the ashes, and happily accepted Hinchey”™s grant to help start making the footlights shine once more.
