‘Impossible Dream’ comes to an end
Somewhere in its long history, Charleroi’s Coyle Theater might very well have screened “Man of La Mancha,” the 1972 adaptation of the Broadway musical starring Peter O’Toole and based on the story of Don Quixote, the idealistic Spanish knight who tilted at windmills.
It contained the song “The Impossible Dream,” a hummable ditty about glorious quests, fighting the unbeatable foe and running “where the brave dare not go.”
“The Impossible Dream” would have been an appropriate theme for the individuals who kept a yearslong quest afloat to restore Coyle Theater. For more than a decade after the theater closed in 1999, with “Titanic” as its last feature, they tried to raise funds and keep the dream alive that the 120-year-old, onetime movie palace could be given new life as an all-purpose performing arts center and, in turn, help spark a revival of downtown Charleroi’s fortunes.
It was not to be, though. Last week, control of the Coyle Theater was handed over to the Middle Monongahela Industrial Development Corp. (MIDA) by Mid Mon Valley Cultural Trust, the owner of the theater, along with two adjacent storefronts that are also empty. The executive director of MIDA put it bluntly in a story that appeared in this newspaper Tuesday: “MIDA is not going to run a theater.”
That will be a bitter pill to swallow for all the Quixotes who hoped to bring the Coyle back to life. But the possibility they would be able to raise the money for – and the community would be able to support – a performing arts center always seemed improbable. Whether or not the theater and its management would have been able to lure acts typically booked at the long-established Palace Theatre in Greensburg, 25 miles away, or from any number of venues in Pittsburgh, was a questionable prospect. With few other amenities nearby, Coyle Theater would have had a hill to climb to draw patrons from outside the Mon Valley.
The structure itself is also apparently in decrepit condition. The price tag to revive it almost certainly would have been in the millions, and Mid Mon Valley Cultural Trust was beset by problems of its own, with four board chairmen coming and going since 2013, along with a slew of resignations from other board members.
Above all, communities in the region trying to resuscitate shuttered downtown movie theaters haven’t had much luck. The old Basle Theater in downtown Washington was briefly a performing arts venue a decade ago, but it is now a church. The Waynesburg Theater and Arts Center closed in 2011 after 22 years. Malls weakened downtown business districts generally, and the multi-screen multiplexes that started being built in the 1960s and 1970s doomed the old downtown moviehouses. Now, even some of those multiplexes aren’t as lively as they once were, thanks to DVDs, streaming and on-demand services and big-screen television sets that offer many of the pleasures of the multiplex minus the pricey popcorn and endless string of commercials and trailers.
Dreams are hard to let go of, whether impossible or not, but the takeover of Coyle Theater by an industrial redevelopment group and the reuse of the property for some other purpose offers the best chance to bring new life to Charleroi’s downtown and move the struggling Mon Valley community forward.