Tivoli Theatre and Performing Arts Center

The theater closed in 2022 for the largest capital project in its history: a $75 million restoration led by Mills + Schnoering Architects for the Tivoli Theatre Foundation, the nonprofit the City of Chattanooga created in 2015 to steward its civic venues. The work returns the auditorium to its original decorative scheme, with restored plasterwork and chandeliers, carpet woven to match the 1921 pattern, a rebuilt stage and new seating for just over 1,600, down from about 1,750, while threading modern infrastructure through the building. The project also joins the theater to the neighboring four-story Trigg-Smartt building of 1889, known as the Tivoli Center, converting it into expanded public space: an enlarged lobby, new bars and concession areas, a donor lounge, education rooms, a restaurant, a rooftop lounge, an enlarged dressing room wing and offices for the foundation. Inside the Tivoli Center sits the new 250-seat Bobby Stone Cinema, a flexible performance and film space with telescoping seating. Financing combined roughly $12.5 million in federal Historic Tax Credits, a $9 million New Markets Tax Credit allocation, more than $20 million raised through the foundation's capital campaign and nearly $12 million in PACE financing for energy upgrades. Together with Memorial Auditorium and the Walker Theatre, the restored Tivoli anchors a four-venue campus projected to generate about $81.8 million in annual economic activity and more than 300,000 ticketed visits a year.