Petersburg’s only movie theater has received a $30,000 grant from Petersburg Mental Health Services, a local private nonprofit. Much of that will go toward replacing the digital sign on Haugen Drive, which the theater shares with the school district.
Petersburg Mental Health is a nonprofit that uses invested funds to give grants to organizations that benefit the community. They also provide limited access to behavioral health services. This grant is the largest that Petersburg Mental Health has given to date.
The current sign on Haugen Drive promotes upcoming movies and school events, and displays other community information. The sign has been up for a little over a decade, and the manager Cyndy Fry said the technology is dated.
“Our sign… has been slowly dying, is probably a nice way of putting it,” she said.
Some of the lights no longer work, and they’ve had to replace the electronics. To update the messages, Fry has to physically connect a USB drive to the pole, and that doesn’t always work.
She said the new sign will look similar but will be a major improvement.
“We can send the message over the magic airways, so we don’t have to walk the USB through the snow,” she said.
Fry said the theater will also use the funds to replace lighting in the auditorium and buy needed parts for other equipment.
The movie theater is in a starkly different financial spot than just one year ago. Last year, the theater was facing a financial crisis and struggling to stay open.
Since then, it’s seen significant financial and community support. On top of this grant, an out-of-state production company raised over $8,000 for the nonprofit in December. Fry said that puts the theater in a good spot for the next year.
“We’re holding our own. We’re making intentional choices financially, and I really feel we’re going to be in a good position to continue to move forward,” Fry said. “We couldn’t do it without our community.”
The Northern Nights theater has shows Fridays and Saturdays at 6:30 and Sundays at 4:00.
Correction: a previous version of this story had an incorrect age for the current Northern Nights Theater sign. It is actually just over a decade old.
