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The Effort to Return the Forest Theater to Its Community Has Reached Half Its Fundraising Goal

The Forest Theater has sat mostly empty for decades. Forest Forward, the nonprofit leading the charge to preserve it and turn it into a hub for the community again, just hit a major milestone.
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The Forest Theater has been mostly closed for decades in South Dallas, but there has long been talk of bringing it back and what that could mean to the community in which it sits. The most recent effort to rehabilitate the shuttered theater has raised roughly half of its $75 million goal. It could reopen next year.

The theater, which opened in 1949 when the area was home to an upper-class and mostly Jewish community, was at first a luxurious place to see a movie. When it opened, 5,000 people attended the block party and square dance. A double showing of It Happens Every Spring packed people in. But U.S.-175 cut the area off from downtown Dallas. White flight settled in, and by 1956, it was designated a “negro” theater.’ A decade later, it shut its doors.

But even then, it was a hub for the community. The entire shopping strip abutting the theater became a place where creativity thrived. Over the years, the Forest hosted B.B. King, Wilson Pickett, Ike and Tina Turner, Redd Foxx, Prince, and the South Dallas Pop Festival. By the 90s, though, it fell into disrepair, and attempts to bring it back (including one by South Dallas native Erykah Badu), faltered. In 2017, Linda and Jon Halbert bought the property after a series of events aligned to make it possible, and the two began working with the nonprofit CitySquare to develop a plan to save the structure and rebuild it to meet the community’s needs.

Forest Forward, the nonprofit that was born from that plan, has been working to raise money to improve and rehabilitate the aging structure. Last week, it announced that it had raised more than half of its campaign goal. By reaching that halfway mark, the campaign is on target to start construction on the Forest this year. It could hold the grand opening on December 2024, the theater’s 75th anniversary. (The Halberts sit on the Forest Forward board.)

The 66,000-square foot project is expected to include a 1,000-seat performance hall, a 13,000 square foot arts education hub, a studio theater, café offerings, and a rooftop feature.

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Forest Forward

Forest Forward said this week that it had raised $11.5 million in a short amount of time, including grants from Communities Foundation of Texas, the Constantin Foundation, and Rainwater Charitable Foundation. It also received $4 million in federal money. Another $500,000 came from a donor who wished to remain anonymous.

The money doesn’t just go to restoring a theater, though. Forest Forward’s goal has been to create a gathering place for the South Dallas community, a central point for the kind of growth that gets its momentum from within the neighborhood.

“Our strategy is focused on holistic and inclusive revitalization including arts education, cradle-to-college support, building of mixed-income housing, and the restoration of the historic Forest Theater,” read a statement from Forest Forward CEO Elizabeth Wattley.

The organization’s campaign to raise $75,215,000 is also symbolic of the zip code 75215, where the theater sits, Wattley said.

“The life expectancy in this ZIP code of South Dallas is just 67 years, the lowest life expectancy in Dallas County,” she said. “If you drive even two miles further, the life expectancy increases by another 16 years. This initiative is about impacting quality of life.”

A long-term partnership with Dallas ISD will mean that the Martin Luther King Jr. Arts Academy—a school with a STEAM curriculum also known as a “Baby Booker T” for its alignment with Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts—will be able to use the theater for learning space, performances, and more.

Communities Foundation of Texas pitched in $5 million. Wende Burton, the nonprofit’s chief philanthropy officer, said the Forest’s goals resonated with donors: a project that could help a community with its specific needs.

“We have been in conversations with Elizabeth Wattley and her team even before the pandemic, when this was an idea,” Burton said, adding that what attracted CFT to the project was that “it was more than just rebuilding a theater.”

Burton says CFT will also provide money from a second-year grant to help Forest Forward with its fundraising goals. 

The rehabilitation comes as the city and the Texas Department of Transportation reconfigure the area around S.M. Wright Freeway, the very thing that kickstarted the decline, blocks away from where the theater sits on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. The existing highway will be turned into a tree-lined boulevard with sidewalks, bike lanes, and more pedestrian-friendly infrastructure. The city of Dallas is also helping with similar improvements to MLK.

“It’s about the investment in the community, and the way (Wattley) and her team have gone about it, really centering the community in the middle of it,” Burton said. “It’s not being done just for a place, but for the people who live in the place.”

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Bethany Erickson

Bethany Erickson

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Bethany Erickson is the senior digital editor for D Magazine. She's written about real estate, education policy, the stock market, and crime throughout her career, and sometimes all at the same time. She hates lima beans and 5 a.m. and takes SAT practice tests for fun.

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