A multimillion-dollar, multi-year project to bring Belfast’s opera house back to life after decades of disuse is now on hold.
Over those decades, the expansive venue upstairs at the 1860s-era downtown Hayford Block has been the subject of numerous revival efforts.
Most recently, seasonal Islesboro residents Alex and Kendra Brigham, who have bought numerous other central Belfast properties in recent years, purchased it in 2023 and started renovations with private funding under the LLC name The Old Belfast Opera House.
They hoped to reopen it within two to three more years as an event space that preserved its character while adding modern technology, local project manager Earl MacKenzie told the City Council in June. Most changes they wanted to make were interior or structural.
If completed, the long-awaited project would restore an arts venue to the midcoast city, joining other recently renovated spaces such as the neighboring Colonial Theatre. Historic opera houses have been overhauled in other places around the state including Boothbay, Gardiner, Rockport and Waterville.
The lower floor of the building is also home to longtime local businesses including Opera House Video and Left Bank Books.
Now, the Brighams need to move funds toward other projects they are involved with in Arizona, MacKenzie said Thursday. He declined to go into specifics about those ventures.
Some structural work is still ongoing at the opera house and work crews remain employed, but the overall renovation project is on hold indefinitely.
Though owners hope to restart work in the future, they would also consider selling the building if someone with the independent funds to pick the project back up came along, according to MacKenzie. Plans are “shovel-ready,” he said.
“In the long term, we still hope to see it completed,” he said Thursday.
MacKenzie and the Brighams have declined to share specific costs, but he described the work as an “enormous project” costing “many, many millions” of dollars.
Most architectural and interior design work is now complete, MacKenzie said Thursday. The building’s south brick wall has been repointed with stabilizing work still ongoing inside, and work has been done on the foundation.
“It’s much better than it was when we started,” he said.
In October, the owners proposed upgrades to city officials such as window and door replacements, a new raised walkway along Church Street for accessibility, a new mechanical room and wheelchair access in the courtyard behind the block. Along with designing interior work, technology and lighting, they planned to add about 800 movable floor seats — down from the original 1,300 person capacity — to accommodate various events, MacKenzie said in June.
Residential tenants also moved out on the second floor, which was set to become the lobby, he told the City Council.
Other plans included a main entrance marquee off of Church Street and another in the rear courtyard, along with exterior lighting and signs, according to documents submitted to the city’s design review committee.
Upgrades to the Brighams’ other holdings in Belfast will continue, MacKenzie said. They own seven downtown properties: the Old Professor’s Bookshop, the Chocolate Drop Candy Shoppe, the Edward Jones and RE/MAX buildings, the Brigham Green park and the new Brigham Block across from City Hall constructed after demolition of the Embee Cleaners building.
MacKenzie said the couple’s operations and Old Belfast Opera House LLC are still financially healthy. They chose to finance the project themselves to complete it more quickly than if they had to fundraise or rely on historic building tax credits, he said.
“We have long hoped that someone would restore the Opera House to its former grandeur where it could serve again as an important stitch weaving the community we love even tighter together,” Alex Brigham said in a statement to the Bangor Daily News last year. “This is so precious considering we increasingly live in a time when many communities are fraying apart.”
