Cincinnati Shakespeare Company has announced plans for a $25 million expansion of its Over-the-Rhine campus.
Designed by Downtown architecture firm GBBN, the addition will include a 19,000-square-foot community arts and education center, and a new studio theater with over 150 seats arranged in a flexible, moveable layout.
The studio theater will be built just south of The Otto M. Budig Theater, a $17.5 million Shakespeare Company development that opened in 2017, at the corner of Elm and West 12th streets.
According to a press release, the 33-year-old nonprofit has outgrown its existing campus. After nearly a decade, the company has expanded from six to 10 annual productions, bringing about 28,000 audience members to the urban core for shows each
year. With the studio theater, the company will be able to produce up to 15 shows across both venues.
"When we announced our new theater in 2015, we knew it was only the beginning," Brian Isaac Phillips, producing artistic director and CEO, said in the release. "Today, we have the opportunity to complete that vision by building spaces where more artists can create, more students can learn, more community partners can gather, and more audiences can experience live theatre."
Messer Construction Co. will manage the build. Work is expected to begin in spring 2027, and wrap up by fall 2028.
Another nonprofit builds big in Cincinnati
The Cincy Shakes expansion comes amid a wave of major development in the region's nonprofit sector. A recent Enquirer analysis found that since 2015, at least 50 Cincinnati area nonprofits have spent a collective $1 billion on new headquarters buildings.
Post-pandemic, many of those nonprofits are building bigger to include community gathering spaces, rentable office space for partner organizations, and space for more staff. In the arts and entertainment world, institutions like the Cincinnati Children's Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and the Cincinnati Ballet, among others, have raised money to revamp or modernize their performance venues and add more diverse programming.
“Across the industry, institutions are being challenged to rely less on any single revenue source and to maximize performance,” Sara Clark, Cincy Shakes director of development, said in a statement. “For organizations like Cincy Shakes, with strong demand and stable operations, this moment rewards flexibility. Audiences are returning, demand for arts summer camps and student programs continues to rise, and we find ourselves at a rare convergence of readiness and opportunity.”
The theater company's announcement comes as Cincy Shakes launches its $25 million public capital campaign, "For All, For All Time."
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Cincy Shakes to build $25M expansion to Over-the-Rhine theater campus
