Greensburg's Palace Theatre opens curtain on second-floor apartments

The Westmoreland Cultural Trust's eight-year quest to renovate upper-story apartments at The Palace Theatre in Greensburg saw its first fruits this week — tenants ready to move into two of four updated units on the second floor.

"We haven't advertised them yet," said Mike Langer, president of the trust that operates the theater. "It was through word-of-mouth."

Once four planned apartments on the third floor also are ready for occupancy — tentatively by next spring — Langer expects the rentals will go a long way toward making the theater self-sufficient.

Together with the Palace's existing revenue streams — that includes roughly 1,350 seats available for 100 annual concerts and other live events — the apartments should help cover about 90 percent of the theater's $1.4 million annual operating budget, Langer said.

In return, he said, studies have shown that The Palace Theatre pumps about $10.8 million annually into the local economy.

"To the best of our knowledge, there are no live theaters that pay their bills with ticket sales alone," he said. "We have to do something to subsidize it.

"These apartments will play a major role in keeping the Palace doors open and creating self-sustainability for decades to come."

The apartments are located over the Palace's box office and intermission suite, rather than the theater itself. To comply with modern building codes, the eight units were constructed in a space that contained 10 apartments when the building opened as the Manos Theatre in September 1926.

The apartments had housed the traveling vaudeville performers who initially dominated the Palace stage. "It was very expensive to put them in hotel rooms," Langer noted.

Others continued to rent the apartments until about a decade ago, when the trust decided an update was in order.

"It was almost undoable to preserve the original architecture," Langer said. "We demo'd all of it and put in all-new apartments."

Work crews from Caliber Construction of Swissvale uncovered period artifacts, including magazines and posters from the 1940s and '50s.

"For a little while, it was almost like a treasure hunt," Langer said. "We've got them all in storage. We'll probably go through them later this summer and perhaps will display them in the PNC historical archive section of the theater."

The new apartments range from a 900-square-foot, one-bedroom unit to a 1,150-square-foot, two-bedroom version. Typical rents, including utilities, are $750 and $1,000 per month.

So far, Langer said, the units have attracted interest among local young professionals — attorneys and hospital interns — as well as "snowbirds" who "spend six months of the year in Florida, and they're downsizing to apartments in Westmoreland County."

Langer said the trust dipped into its coffers to supplement grants from four foundations when extra work brought the initial project budget close to $1 million.

"Some of the structural beams that were hidden, we found going forward that they all needed to be replaced," along with roof trusses, Langer said. "Now we feel we've got that all fixed for the next 100 years."

He said the cost for completing the third-floor apartments is expected to be closer to $750,000.

Looking further ahead, Langer said, the trust would like to renovate the basement of the building, which housed a bowling alley and billiards room, as a multi-purpose community space.

Langer invited anyone who has memories of the bowling alley to share or is interested in an apartment to call him at 724-836-1123.

Jeff Himler is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724-836-6622, jhimler@tribweb.com or via Twitter @jhimler_news.