Petition Pushes For Sale Of Fairfield Community Theatre

FAIRFIELD, CT — An online petition is pushing for the sale of the Fairfield Community Theatre, which closed in 2011, to a developer or group for revitalization.

Keith Rhodes launched the petition at change.org and is calling on the “current owners—David Pollack and his family—to sell the property as soon as possible to allow for the theatre's timely redevelopment and restoration as a performing arts space.”

The petition has been rapidly collecting online signatures on Monday and had received more than 900 as of 6:15 p.m. on Monday with a goal of 1,000 (update: more than 3,800 signatures were collected as of 5 p.m. on Sunday, March 12 with an increased goal of 5,000).

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Rhodes wrote of the iconic downtown landmark in the petition:

“We all see it just sitting there, in a sad state of disrepair, our Fairfield Community Theatre. It makes us feel as if the town is also in sad shape—despite the vitality that surrounds it. And why not? When a downtown theatre closes and the theatre remains vacant, it is usually one of the first signs of downtown decay. Collectively, we are saddened that something has been lost here and we can’t help to feel the pain for our children, our community and the future of our town. We drive by and wish that somebody would do something to fix it. We wonder, ‘who owns it?’ And, ‘why doesn’t the town do something about it?’”

Rhodes, who was appointed to the town’s Economic Development Commission in late 2016, wrote that there have been many attempts to revitalize the property since it closed in 2011 but they have been repeatedly turned down by the owners.

“I love our town and like so many others in our community, I'm pained to see such an extraordinary opportunity wasting away,” Rhodes writes in the petition. “We can do this together. We know that David Pollack and his siblings are reasonable people, they just need to know how important it is to all of us.”

Read the full petition at Change.org here.

Patch file photo