The event drew an audience of more than 100 people. Fittingly, the area of the parking lot where they stood and applauded the construction plans is where the stage and seating for the theater will be added in an addition next year.

Pendragon Theatre’s home has been on Brandybrook Avenue for most of its four-and-a-half decade lifespan. The theater is set up to move to a currently abandoned building, formerly an A & P Supermarket.

Pendragon Board President Melinda Little admits, she wasn’t for moving at first. But on Tuesday she said the move will be beneficial for the theater.

“Sadly, the deteriorating site has struggled to meet the needs of a diverse range of audience members,” a Pendragon news release reads. “It has also put restrictions on the quality of production Pendragon has been able to provide.”

Pendragon Theatre board President Melinda Little speaks at a groundbreaking ceremony for the theater on the corner of Woodruff and Church streets on Tuesday. Construction on the theater’s new location is expected to start in the fall. The board hopes to open the new theater in downtown Saranac Lake in the spring of 2026, ahead of the summer season. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

Raccoons find their way into the building, too, according to Little.

Though they are still seeking around $1.78 million more, Little said they’ve raised enough money to start construction in October with plans to open at the new location in the spring of 2026, in time for the summer season.

Little said at the groundbreaking that work will need to be done to prepare this portion of the parking lot for the addition. It was the site of a sawmill back in the day and soil tests show the ground is not sound enough to hold the theater — it is not load-bearing.

So they are going to have to dig out the dirt and remove the buried sawdust and sand so they don’t have a sinking theater. In the meantime, there’s lots of work to be done inside the existing structure through the winter.

There wasn’t actually any ground to break at the ceremony, per se. The little pile of dirt was donated by Karen Lewis and Beth Glover.

“I don’t want it back,” Lewis said.

Glover explained that she dug a 50-foot garden in their property a while ago and saved some of the dirt in case she ever needed it.

“I’ve never needed it,” Glover said. “So, they needed it. It’s perfect. Isn’t that hilarious? How weird though, that I’ve hoarded dirt.”

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Community support

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Pendragon board members, actors, fans, elected officials and friends of the project assembled at the site Tuesday.

Pendragon Managing Director Michael Aguirre read a letter of support from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY.

Aguirre recalled how Assemblyman Billy Jones, D-Chateaugay Lake, visited the new proposed location at the tail end of the pandemic, a time when the theater stage was dark. They planned to show off the future center, but in the cold, the pipes had frozen and burst, and a “waterfall” was pouring in.

“(Jones) turned to us and said ‘I understand the need for your urgency now,'” Aguirre said.

Jones said he believes the theater will have a big economic impact on downtown Saranac Lake.

“Look around this — I was going to say room. Look around this parking lot and see the community spirit. You can feel the energy,” Jones said. “You can not have a pulse and not be excited.”

He gave a plug for more donors to contribute to the project.

Harrietstown Supervisor Jordanna Mallach asked if anyone in the crowd was in Saranac Lake for their first time ever. Two people raised their hands. Mallach said at Pendragon plays, that number is likely many more. The new downtown location will be an opportunity to show off the town’s culture and community, she said.

On the way in, attendees will pass by a bakery, Early Dawn Confections, and a health foods store, Nori’s Village Market.

“And maybe they’ll even stop at the eye doctor. You never know,” Mallach added with a laugh, referencing the Eye Care for the Adirondacks office across the street.

Saranac Lake Mayor Jimmy Williams said his first time in the theater was when his parents brought him to a play when he was 8 years old.

“It opened my mind a little bit. It was special to sit there and watch live art,” Williams said. “That exposure that we can have for our kids, that we can go as families and see something so special in our little mountain is what really gets me.”

He said he gets his dad Pendragon season tickets every Christmas.

“What the village has done for this project pales in comparison to the work and countless volunteer hours, pushing year after year to make this a reality,” Williams said.

Little has been involved with the theater since the 1980s. She said she came from New York City and found a real sense of community there.

Others do, too. Little referenced Pendragon’s numerous awards in the “BroadwayWorld” news website, including “Favorite Professional Theatre” two years in a row.

Cloudsplitter Foundation Vice Chair Holly Wolff choked up when quoting a parent who told her “It’s seldom when one can see the moment when your child thinks they know what they want to do with their life, and that happened at Pendragon.”

She said the theater has impacted a lot of people.

Several speakers excitedly mentioned all the other projects and developments in the downtown area and how they will complement the theater.

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Funding and the future

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Little said it took a while to get the project through the development board. There was a hiccup as it was found that the back corner of the building actually sits across a property line. Little said they are working out an easement with that other property’s owner.

She said the theater selected a construction manager last week.

This project kicked off with a $2.5 million share of the nearly $10 million state Downtown Revitalization Initiative grant the village got in 2018. The theater was the largest private recipient of the total grant.

The project also received $2 million in a Restore New York Communities Initiative grant last year.

Pendragon spokesperson Jess Collier said they have raised more than $8 million in public and private donations.

While she said this was “far beyond the original goal,” due to construction prices increasing, the goal also had to be increased.

The campaign was stalled for several years during the coronavirus pandemic, during which, construction costs have risen sharply.

Collier said Pendragon is still seeking to raise $1.78 million in private support for the project.

The theater had a goal of $500,000 to open up a $250,000 match from an anonymous donor and Wolff announced that they hit that goal on Tuesday.

Wolff said Cloudsplitter holds the mortgage for the building, since it is hard for a nonprofit like Pendragon to get financial backing from normal financial institutions. She said for every $100,000 pledge in the next four years, Cloudsplitter is reducing the mortgage for Pendragon.

The Pendragon: The Next Stage for Downtown fundraising campaign can be found at pendragontheatre.org/donate.

The Pendragon Theatre summer season starts on Tuesday at its Brandybrook Avenue location with “The Marvelous Wonderettes.”