Tivoli Theatre asks city for COVID relief money as the pandemic cost the theatre an estimated $8.5 million

CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee- A historic Chattanooga theatre is turning to the city for help as it continues to financially struggle due to the pandemic.

Tilovi theatre has been hit hard as it has been closed for most of the 2020 season.

“We estimate that we’ve lost about $8.5 million in revenue that we would’ve experienced in a normal typical year,” said Executive Director Nick Wilkinson.

Wilkinson said the Tivoli foundation $325,000 in cash on hand and is now asking for $225,000 from the city in COVID-19 relief.

“We look at what we’re up against and what we project to have on hand at the end of this year without this $225,000 in support our future is very uncertain,” said Wilkinson.

Wilkinson said the organization has trimmed the budget by $60,000 per month but, monthly bills are still around $75,000 per month.

“We have trim cost and we’ve trim cost again we went into this pretty lean and mean and I like to say we’ve come out of this even later and meaner so we are really about as efficient as we can be for an organization our size,” said Wilkinson.

He said this has been rough on the organization and on the economy as seven full time staff members have been furloughed and everyone else still employed have taken a pay cut.

He said Tivoli helps bring the community together and it brings money into the cities economy.

“We’ve always taken city investment and more than quintupled increased it by 6-700% we’re going to do even more of that moving forward in the coming year but we have to be able to make it through this period,” said Wilkinson.

On top of all that the theater was generating a little bit of money by re-running old movies where people could go and enjoy classics. That revenue source is gone as a theatre has had to re-close.

“We’ve been able to do a lot of things just to stem the tide a little bit that said recently we’ve decided it’s a safe and healthy thing along with the mayors office to close again and our ability to generate revenue has kind of gone away and we don’t see it coming back with live events for months to come,” said Wilkinson.

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