The River and Rail Theatre Company has been bringing local productions to Knoxville and East Tennessee since 2015. It has been at its current location on State Street in Old City since 2019, but now it’s ready for a change in setting.
“Our production size, our show size, our audiences call for more. There were space considerations we had to take into account as our organization continued to thrive,” Kenneth Herring, executive director of River and Rail Theatre Company, said.
River and Rail announced that it would be leaving its old location and moving to a new one at 2651 Magnolia Ave. Herring explained the primary reasons for the move, including that they had outgrown the space in Old City.
“We just outgrew the Old City Performing Arts Center,” Herring said. “It’s about a 150-175 person black box theatre.”
River and Rail closed the purchase of its new production facility just two weeks ago. The facility, which is over 12,000 square feet, is set to be River and Rail’s new “forever home.” It sports key features for the production company, such as its size. Herring discussed the greatest attributes of the new space.
“The number one highlight is that it looks and feels and will operate as what many people will think of as a traditional theatre,” Herring said.
The new theatre will have a lobby, box office, bar and concession stand, plenty of parking and will seat between 225 and 250 seats in the audience.
Herring emphasized that he believes the theatre will be a perfect fit for the organization and will allow River and Rail to continue to invest in the east Knoxville community.
Herring also mentioned the effect that the booming real estate market in Knoxville had on the Old City location.
“As many of us know, over the past couple years, the real estate market has seen some significant improvements in certain areas, Knoxville being one of them,” Herring said.
“We began to get phone calls and inquiries about the sale of our building. So after saying no multiple times, we finally said maybe, and eventually we said yes, and there was an offer we really couldn’t refuse. It made a lot of business sense.”
The transition to the new facility hasn’t been without challenges, however. Finding a new location for the productions of River and Rail was difficult, especially when it came to leaving the Old City neighborhood. Herring discussed the challenges that leaving the old location presented.
“We wanted to look at the option of staying in the downtown area,” Herring said. “However, this property that we were approached with was so beautiful, and the area that it’s in is so magnificent, that it really provided an opportunity for us to look outside of our natural comfort zone. Finding something that we really liked was a challenge.”
The new location will allow River and Rail to seat more people in the audience and partner with more community organizations.
Herring cited enhanced sound production quality, lighting control and flooring as benefits to the production quality of future projects at the new facility.
Herring expressed River and Rail’s excitement to enter its upcoming capital campaign.
“It is going to take money to renovate the building,” Herring said. “It’s obviously going to take money to buy the building outright and have it fully in the name of River and Rail. It’s going to take fundraising — a significant amount of money — and we will be asking the community to support us in that endeavor.”
River and Rail is looking forward to that community support as it embarks on the construction of its new production facility. River and Rail has stated that they expect the new facility to enter service around early 2027.
