TOLEDO, Ohio — For more than 100 years, the Ohio Theatre and Event Center on Lagrange Street in Toledo has been a place of memories for many.
And at the Zablocki Senior Center, residents share some of those memories.
"My sons were participating in the plays and such there, each grade would have their plays there," resident Mary Gonzales said.
Another resident, Kathleen Johnson, said she used to live down the block from the historical building.
"As a child, we'd always walk down there to see the movies, they always had it on top of the board so we could see what movie was playing," she said.
While it now serves as a community arts hub, it used to have all the classic staples of a movie theater.
"I remember the vending machines, they'd have popcorn and we'd sit all over the place there and as we got older we had meetings there," Johnson said.
Like many historical buildings, the theatre has weathered sad memories too.
"In 2008, it was struck by lightning, the marquee fell off the building and it was completely obliterated and the facade was rendered unstable," Aimee Reid, the executive artistic director of the Children's Theatre Workshop, said.
But history is being restored because $2.5 million of funding will be going into rebuilding the building's infrastructure, a new marquee and a new addition as well.
"We are also going to be using the funds to completely restore the building next door to make it a campus for our children and their activities, their classes, their rehearsals," Reid said.
Reid hopes to bring in more youth to build the local arts community.
"My goal for the children's theater workshop is to make theater as ubiquitous as an experience as going to a Mud Hens game or going to the zoo, it's just something you do as a Toledo theater child," she said.
Johnson said this revitalization could lead to a new generation making their own lifelong memories there.
"I think a new generation could experience it now, I think that's what we need, keep it going, get the neighborhood back and see what we used to have when we were kids," said Johnson.
There is currently no timeline on when the restorations could be finished. Rep. Marcy Kaptur used discretionary federal funding allotted to representatives to use for local projects for the theatre restoration.