New Seats Press Release

Market House Theatre has raised over $55,000 towards the purchase of new seats. “We’ve placed the order for the new seats and will receive them around mid December,” according to MHT Executive Director Michael Cochran. “This will replace all but the last three rows of our current seats. The original seats were manufactured in the early 1900’s out of cast iron. We began the campaign four years ago and with prices rising every year we felt we needed to purchase the majority of the seats now and not wait another year” Cochran said. “Since we first began this project costs have increased by over $16,000.”

Funding has come from a variety of sources. The theatre held a new seat campaign for donors to have their name engraved on a plaque on the new seats in addition to taking orders from those people who want to own a piece of history by purchasing the old seats. The theatre seat campaign raised over $22,000 in donations. A grant was secured from the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels Good Works program for over $18,000. “The final piece was using the earnings from our endowment,” said Cochran. The Market House Theatre’s Endowment is held at the Community Foundation of Western Kentucky. Each year individuals have donated to MHT’s Endowment and the theatre received matching funds from the Fred Paxton Fund Run for Charities. Those individual contributions and matching funds raised over $14,000 in earnings revenue without touching the principal. “This is exactly what the Community Foundation and the Fred Paxton Fund Run has been encouraging us to do- grow our endowment so that the earnings can help with projects like this or when funds get tight. This project was a perfect fit,” said Cochran.

While the theatre still needs to raise $10,000 to purchasing the remaining seats, Cochran said that he feels confident that those funds can be raised within the next two seasons. “We have several projects that the theatre is working on before we reach our 50th Anniversary of the founding of the theatre in 2014. Lots of exciting changes are on the horizon for Market House Theatre.” MHT audiences will get their first chance to sit in the new seats next January.