The demolition of the old Soo Theatre building in Weyburn is now complete.

Ryan Janke, President of the Weyburn Theatre Community Service Cooperative, said he wanted to thank everyone for being patient with having that chunk of Third Street blocked off. 

"Especially the local businesses there who put up with the noise and the disruption and lack of parking, and the customers having to find their way through the maze of fence that we had there for a while. Really appreciate the community support on this and getting the project to where it is right now."

In terms of salvaging bricks, Janke said that the bad news is they didn't recover as many as they had hoped to. 

Soo theatrePhoto courtesy of Weyburn Theatre/Facebook.

"Most of them crumbled when we took the building down, and the downside to that is that recovering those out of the pile was almost impossible."

Janke explained the small amount of bricks they do have, they're going to try and re-incorporate into the concession stand of the new building.

"Unfortunately, there aren't really enough that we can make them available to anyone right now, which is unfortunate because I know there was a little bit of excitement around that, and I wish I had better news in that regard."

He shared that they are going to try and take the few that they do have and make sure that they are preserved as part of the history of the old building when they put them into the new build.

There are going to be some major announcements in the next couple of months, Janke revealed.

"We are only about a third of the way to our goal right now. So with a few of these announcements that will get us a little bit closer. There are going to be some more sponsorship opportunities aimed a little bit more at individuals."

"We will have seats available for $500 and stars, like Walk of Fame style stars in the lobby, and those are going to go for $2500. You can expect to see that announcement come formally fairly soon, possibly even some kind of a mail drop that will bring the information right to you."

Over and above that, Janke said that we won't likely see construction of the new build until the spring of 2024.

"We need to get our finalized drawings and we found some things with the demolition that are going to inform what we can actually do and how we can build on that site."

He said that they weren't really able to nail down what their drawings were going to look like before that, but they'll have that done fairly soon. "We are expecting this to go out to tender late in the summer and we are going to try to be as local as possible because it's a community project, and we want as many people from Weyburn to be involved as we possibly can."

Janke added that they're really happy with where they are right now and extremely appreciative of all the support they've received from the community and the businesses in Weyburn.