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Rockford Theatre undergoing renovation

The Rockford Theatre may be closed for business right now, but community volunteers are hard at work inside. They're renovating and preparing for new seats that theatre manager Glenda Collier says are scheduled to ship in May.

The theatre's 192 seats will be replaced with 150 new blue seats with black accents, allowing for more room between the rows and making movie watching much more comfortable. Collier says there is also a platform being built which will provide room for four wheelchair-accessible spots.

Volunteers are using this downtime to prepare the theatre for the seats before they arrive. Collier continued work as she spoke, as the sounds of a blade scraping across a wall were audible through the telephone interview as she continued scraping wallpaper to prepare the walls for new paint.

Painting isn't the only improvement planned. Volunteers will install new flooring. Walk-off carpet tiles in the entry will help keep snow and gravel from traveling into the theatre. New luxury vinyl tile will be installed in the bathrooms and concession area and Kinetex carpet tile in the lobby and down the aisles of the theatre. The commercial-grade flooring from Design Direction, Inc. in Fargo should be arriving this week. Halvorson Flooring is supplying luxury vinyl planking for under the seats and up to the movie screen. The finishes were selected by Sydney Ulrich, an interior designer at Design Direction, Inc. and Collier's daughter.

Additional volunteers will be needed to help remove the old theatre seats before the new ones are delivered in May. Once the work is completed, summer moviegoers will be able to enjoy the new seats with more leg room and totally new décor.