DAVENPORT, Iowa — The Davenport Junior Theatre program will move from the Annie Wittenmeyer Campus to the former Younkers retail space in NorthPark Mall next spring.
The decision comes after Davenport City Council approved a plan to turn the campus into affordable housing for families and seniors in January. Davenport Parks & Recreation held a community input meeting later that month to help decide where the program should move to.
Daniel Sheridan has been the performing arts supervisor for 16 years. He, alongside theatre staff, Parks & Recreation leadership and the Junior Theatre, Inc. nonprofit used the 342 public responses they received to find an interim facility.
"A big misconception about our program is that we're just a theatre, when really 85% of our venue is educational space, and shops and storage," Sheridan said. "So as far as finding a space that had the capacity to hold everything all together under one roof, [it] was hard to find any spaces that big and also check the boxes with parking and green space."
The interim facility will have one extra dance studio and bigger theatre studios. The theatre itself will have 270 seats—downsize from the current 362-seat Nighswander Theatre.
You can read the full facility proposal on the Junior Theatre website. After that, the program asks that the public give their feedback through a short survey — you can find that here.
Sheridan said he expects the program to stay in the space for three to five years. After that, it will start construction of a purpose-built facility.
"That was always the dream of Junior Theatre's founder, was to create a facility specifically for the performing arts," Sheridan said.
The program will continue operating out of the Annie Wittenmeyer campus until May 2025. It will complete the move to NorthPark Mall in June.
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