Breathing New Life into brooklyn
“Irish Hills Sports and Recreation is a non-profit whose goal is to provide recreational sports-centered and arts-driven activities for the surrounding community to gather families. But now, we’re outreaching into community arts-driven spaces. The director is Kyle Young, a pastor at Heart of the Lakes Church in Brooklyn, Michigan. The Irish Hills Sports and Recreation began as a way to bring communities together by fostering social events, community-oriented events, sports-related recreational events. But they also wanted to do something big for the community at large, so they asked around for ideas and heard the same thing over and over: ‘Everybody in the village of Brooklyn wants to see the Star Theatre reopened. If you want to make an impact, that’s what you need to do.’
The vision for the space became not just to reopen as a theatre for movies, but a space for the arts and other forms of family entertainment. They called the former owner of the theatre, and while he had historically not been willing to sell this space, he said, ‘You know what, I like your vision’ and sold us the building. We took possession in October of 2024.
We are absolutely restoring it as a movie theatre, but we want to do so much more than that. The Star Theatre can become a centerpiece, a place where the entire community can gather together into a space to create moments and memories that last.
To accomplish that, there is a lot of work to do. First, we’ve been working with an architect firm in Adrian. We can’t move forward with some of the MEDC grant funding that we need until we have that in place. This building was built in 1937, so our capital campaign aims to raise $1,937,000. In order to receive MEDC funding, we need to fundraise 15% of the total, which is around $300,000. As soon as we get to that mark, MEDC funds will cover a large majority of the project.
We will need the renovations that a building like this requires: Infrastructure, HVAC, roofing. That stuff may not be flashy or fun, but they must be done for the community to enjoy the building. $1.4 million of the amount we need to raise are for renovations, and $500,000 is for an endowment that will help support operations when it’s up and running.
Any community with a vibrant arts culture is a healthier community. We also opened the lobby area for the holiday parade last November, and we had probably over 500 people come through. To see those people stepping in here for the first time after 30 years… their faces were just so full of joy! You can see the memories flash across their minds. You can see the nostalgia. The pride. They all remember the first movie or last movie they saw in here. It gives me goosebumps even to think about just how excited people were that this vital, historic part of their community is coming alive again.
I believe in small communities. Spaces like this mean something to people and provide a backbone of what a community is meant to be and what it should be. A community is people coming together, and that’s exactly what this place does. We’ll talk to anybody who will listen to us about this project in the hopes that it leads toward funders who are excited about the vision of the Star Theatre and want to support it.”
– Jessica Malcheff
Irish Hills Sports and Recreation
Star Theatre
119 N. Main St., Brooklyn, MI 49230
https://www.restorethestar.com/
