Next time you’re in the Paramount Theatre, take a look up to the opera boxes, stage right. Look closely. On one, the paint is pink and faded, the gold cracked and peeling, and the surrounding plaster molding is stained and mottled. Then look to the box behind. That pink is now a fresh green, the gold has been restored, and the molding hasn’t looked this good since opening day in 1915.
The difference is the first sign of a massive restoration project that will renew and refresh not simply the Grande Dame of Congress Avenue, but its little neighbor to the north, the State. Revealed to the public by the Austin Theatre Alliance this morning, the long-gestating Shine On project will revitalize two of Austin’s biggest and most beloved performance and screening spaces.
It’s a massive endeavor. The Paramount will be first to see a face lift, closing in June 2026 with a scheduled completion date of April 2027. The State will shutter three months later, in July 2027, and stay under construction for 14 months, reopening in November 2028. The whole project is currently anticipated to cost $55.4 million – $22.8 million for the Paramount, $32.5 million for the State, and the rest on new office space in the Aloft Austin hotel. In addition, the team is aiming to build a $10 million endowment for future repairs on top of the nonprofit’s annual $5 million fundraising goal. So far, they already have pledges totaling $27.4 million, almost half the construction cost, and are now asking the broader Austin community for their support to allow the staff to provide what Austin Theatre Alliance Executive Director Jim Ritts jokingly called “unreasonable hospitality.” He added, “The things we’re fixing here, patrons have been asking us to fix for a long, long time.”
However, this isn’t just about adding new facilities, As Ritts noted, the two spaces are of genuine historic importance. The Paramount was opened in 1915, the work of architect John Eberson, a native of what is now Ukraine and the preeminent designer of the great American picture palace, designing over 500 theatres across the states. Twenty years later, St. Louis native W. Scott Dunne designed the State as a dedicated cinema, making the neighboring buildings the heart of what was called Austin’s Show Row. Now the Paramount undergoes its first real renovation since 1979, while the State will see the complete replacement of the interior put in place during the 1998 remodel by Sinclair Black.
It’s a task of massive cultural importance. At a launch event this morning for the public fundraising stage of Shine On, filmmaker Robert Rodriguez explained how central to Austin’s film scene the theatre has become, through the Summer Classic Film Series, his own Panic at the Paramount events, and through major film festivals like South by Southwest and Austin Film Festival. He dubbed it “a magical space” that has been the heart of Austin’s arts scenes “year after year, decade after decade, lifetime after lifetime.” To re-enforce his point, musician and Laboratorio Arts founder Carrie Rodriguez recalled her first performance at the Paramount – aged nine, playing violin in the Halloween Kinderconcert – and how she recently saw her own son, now nine himself, singing on the same stage as part of the Paramount’s education programs. She said, “I felt all the magic of being that 9-year-old in a witch hat.”
Of course, this public reveal is merely a continuation of nearly two decades of planning. Ritts said that the team had been in conversations with Paul Siemborski of the DLR Group about a restoration of the Paramount since 2007, while architecture firm Clayton Korte joined the project to spearhead the State redesign in 2015. In addition, they’ve all been in long-term conversations with the Texas Historical Commission, while preservation experts EverGreene have been consulting on details such as the paint scheme and materials. Ritts said, “Jeff Greene, who was the founder of EverGreene, kind of adopted us.”
Clayton Korte principal Paul Clayton said this will be the biggest cultural project that his team has ever worked on, but it’s really two interconnected projects.
The Paramount will be first and that work can really be seen as a restoration. That’s DLR Group’s specialty, and Siemborski noted that this would actually be the eighth Eberson theatre he has restored: however, he called the Paramount “the jewel in the crown” of Eberson’s portfolio. There will be some significant changes – including the replacement of the seats, the announcement of which caused cheers from the invited audience (Ritts noted that the news usually brought forth a full-blown hallelujah). However, that’s just the start of the process. The project involves a massive cleanup, including removing decades of old smoke stains, switching the colors back to a more 1930s palette, and repairing the chipped plasterwork. Plus, Ritts noted, the historic metalwork endcaps on the seats will be removed and fitted onto the new seats.
Not everything is about refreshing what exists. For visitors, bathrooms and bars will be rebuilt, and the building will add new ADA compliance facilities including listening stations. For the performers and crew, the old lighting rigs bolted to the upper balcony will be removed and a new lighting grid will be floated from the side walls. The sound system will be upgraded to Dolby Atmos, and the projection system will receive a similar overhaul.
However, there will also be one new element that is actually a missing piece of the original plans. Eberson’s original design included a lounge area by the second story windows, but it was never completed. Now that area will be finished as Eberson intended as JP’s Peace Love and Happiness Lounge.
That’s nothing compared to what’s going to happen to the State. Unlike the Paramount, where every change is being made while keeping the whole building’s historic designation status, only the 1935 frontage of the State is protected. Everything east of the front door is being torn out and completely replaced. The State’s new look will feature expanded flex seating options, taking the capacity from 300 seats to 430 fully seated, or nearly 500 in a hybrid seated/standing format. New bathrooms, a new spiral staircase, and four new bars, including a speakeasy in the basement and a rooftop bar.
Significantly, the two spaces will finally become unified, and not just through the new HVAC system that’s being installed. As it would be impossible to install a new ADA-compliant elevator in the historic Paramount, one is being installed in the State that will be for patrons of both spaces, with four access doors between the two finally bringing them together.
The downside, of course, is that this means these two spaces will be out of commission for some of the biggest events on the city’s cultural calendar. The Paramount will be closed for both AFF’s 2026 dates and SXSW 2027, while the State’s closure will affect both festivals and the ATX TV Festival, as well as hundreds of arts and performance events, and the Austin Theatre Alliance’s Moontower Comedy. However, that’s why they’re aiming for an April 1, 2027 opening for the Paramount, so America’s biggest comedy festival doesn’t lose its biggest venue. Ritts acknowledged there’s “a possibility” that they miss that deadline, and if that happens “we might movie Moontower one or two weeks, and maybe move our gala, which is always the second Saturday in May, one or two weeks, but Moontower won’t be touched by this.”
As for the Summer Classic Film Series, Ritts explained, “what we’re hoping is that we’ll be able to launch in ’26 for the first one or two weeks at the Paramount and then move it to the State.” However, that will mean fewer screenings, as there will still be live shows competing for calendar space, and fewer seats at each screening.
That’s not just lost ticket sales for the Paramount, but also a real blow to many Downtown businesses Davon Barbour, president and CEO of the Downtown Austin Alliance called the Paramount “an economic catalyst” for the area, and looked forward to what the new spaces will bring, but one local business owner noted that they can tell when they’ll have a busy day purely from a quick scan of the Paramount listings. Those businesses could take another financial blow just as they’re trying to navigate the impact of the multiyear closure, demolition, and reconstruction of the Austin Convention Center.
The longer concern is that having the two spaces out of commission for over two years between them may mean that the Paramount and State will have to win back audiences. However, Ritts said he was not overly worried. First, there will be no point at which both spaces will be dark, so audiences will have one or the other to visit, keeping that loyalty up. Secondly, the Paramount booking team is working with other venues, including ACL Live and Bass Concert Hall, and other promoters to host shows and events under the Paramount Presents banner, to keep the name and community vibrant. Ritts said, “There are certain artists and others we have a longtime loyalty with, and we’re not going to ask them to skip Austin forever, but we’ll produce them at the other theatres.”
But most of all, he saw how quickly audiences came back and even grew after the pandemic shutdown. He recalled what he told NPR’s All Things Considered host Audie Cornish when she asked about post-Covid audiences. “She actually asked the question in a slightly skeptical way, and I said, ‘There will not be an issue.’” The decades of loyalty from and to audiences and artists will not go away, “and as long as we keep up the conversation with the 297,000 people in our databases, and we do keep producing as Paramount Presents [and], and as we keep doing interesting things, maybe even as a loss leader at the State if we think it’s interesting enough, I think we’ll remain connected to our patrons.”
For more on the Shine On initiative, including how to donate, visit austintheatre.org/shineon.
