Forest Kineto Theater project will be completed with government funding

After a lengthy wait, the Kiwanis Club of Forest has received official notice of federal and provincial funding that clears the way for the final steps of a massive project to expand and update the historic Kineto Theater in the downtown of the Lambton Shores community.

The $88,000 the two levels of government are providing through a community and recreation infrastructure grant program will allow the service club to install a marquee and complete other exterior work on the movie house in Forest it has owned and operated since 1977.

“We’re thrilled to get it,” said Ruth Illman, with the Kiwanis Club.

Club members have been waiting to learn the fate of the grant application since it was first submitted in October 2019, Illman said.

“We thought there was no hope at all. Then, back in April 2021, we got a notice from the Ontario infrastructure office asking, ‘Is our project still viable or do we need to make any changes to it?’”

Initially, the club had applied for the funding to help with interior work, but that had been finished in 2021, so the application was revised to ask for help with a new marquee and exterior work on the historic building, Illman said.

The $1.4-million project expanded the interior of the theater and update its lobby, kitchen and other community spaces.

After submitting a revised application, “Ontario recommended us on to the feds and we’ve been back and forth, fulfilling requirements several times and just kind of waiting with bated breath,” Illman said.

Typically, government infrastructure grants only fund work that hasn’t begun yet, so the club had to waiting on starting the marquee and exterior work to learn the fate of its application, even though the interior work had been finished since mid-2021.

The club is now able to move ahead with its contractor to complete exterior work and adding the new marquee. That work is expected to be competed by the fall.

“We were going to finish the project regardless,” Illman said.

While waiting to hear about the grant, the service club arranged for a credit union loan to pay for the remaining work.

“We’ve been sitting with this horrible-looking facade that just is pretty dingy and dismal,” she said.

The grant will cover the cost and installation of the new marquee, Illman said.

“For more than 100 years, the Kineto Theater has been an institution in Forest and a cultural landmark for southwestern Ontario,” Monte McNaughton, MPP for Lambton-Kent-Middlesex, said in a news release.

Other costs the club has already incurred included engineering and design to ensure the façade of the building could hold the weight of the new marquee, she said.

“We found out as we progressed through the design phase that, if installed a marquee, to the extent of this one, the whole front of the building would fall off,” Illman said.

Work to ensure the structural support is in place has been completed.

So far, the service club has raised about $1.2 million for the project and the $88,000 from the infrastructure program will help bring the remaining $200,000 to complete the work “down to something manageable,” Illman said.

The club is waiting for word on another “promising” grant application that could also help it with the remaining amount, she said.

Completing the facade will be welcomed by the whole community, Illman said.

The downtown in Forest was hit recently by a fire that damaged a block of buildings across the street from the unfinished theater façade, she said.

“Even though the inside is stunning and the community is thrilled. . . you look at the outside and think, ‘it looks awful,’” Illman said.

Completing the façade will transform the downtown, she said.

The interior renovations have already accomplished what the service club hoped for when it launched the project, just as the pandemic was beginning.

“We’re going gangbusters” using the renovated space inside for screenings and community events, Illman said.

“We’re very appreciative of the support from both levels of government,” she said.

A relatively small number of projects in Ontario were approved for funding under the program, “so the chances of the poor little Kineto Theater in Forest getting this funding were basically, we thought, slim to nil,” Illman said.

But that didn’t discourage the service club from trying.

“You throw everything at the wall and you hope something sticks,” Illman said.