The revival of Newcastle's Victoria Theatre has taken a significant step forward with approval of a development application for the building's partial restoration.
The development application lodged late last year detailed plans to preserve as much of the building's fabric and heritage values as possible while providing flexibility and accessibility for artists and audiences.
Century Venues, which bought the dilapidated building in 2015, hope $11.5 million can be raised from the government, private and community sectors to fund the work.
The company said on Tuesday that the theatre, was best positioned out of all the remaining NSW heritage theatres, (Minerva Theatre in Potts Point, the Roxy in Parramatta, the Regents in Mudgee and in Wollongong) to be returned to its original use as a place of public entertainment.
"Ahead of all other potential NSW theatre revivals, the Victoria is a 'shovel ready' fully realisable project; the one-off, once only capital injection required is modest (in comparison to a new theatre build) and no further funding will be required," it said.
"Theatres bring enormous economic flow on to surrounding businesses and the Victoria Theatre will bring people back to the city centre, it will grow new jobs and boost the Hunter's collective live performance and tourism infrastructure."
Ten founding ambassadors, comprising Newcastle and Hunter professional and business interests, have been appointed to drive the campaign to restore the iconic theatre.
"Today we'll celebrate this win and tomorrow we'll escalate the campaign to seek support and investment to help bring the Victoria Theatre back to life," the company said.
The business case for the project argues the theatre has the potential to fill a niche that exists larger theatres, such as the Civic, and several smaller venues.
"There is a huge demand for mid-sized theatres, especially in the music industry, comedy and smaller live performance," Consultant Daniel Ballantyne told the Newcastle Herald last year.
"This will have 1000 and we will typically operate between 400 and 1000. That is a niche that transforms live performance from being loss-leading in a hotel or pub situation to being able to stand on its own two legs commercially and financially."
Century Venues, which has spent about $750,000 on the building to date, will commit about $2million to the restoration fund.
The University of Newcastle's IT Innovation Team spent four months in 2018 creating a virtual model of the Perkins Street theatre as it was in 1891.
The 3D recreation, built by Gaute Rasmussen and Vendela Pento, included exterior and internal spaces including vestibules, stair cases, stalls area, dress circle, upper circle, private boxes, orchestra pit, and stage area.
"We've had to work backwards from the 1921 floor plans, and essentially unwind the 30 years of changes that we know about to get back to 1891," Mr Rasmussen said.
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