Bank Forecloses on Suzanne Roberts Theatre

A bit of shocking news from South Broad Street. Just a couple of blocks and a couple of weeks away from the street’s biggest development in a while — the opening of Jose Garces’ jaw-droppingly expensive Volver inside the Kimmel Center — comes news that the bank is foreclosing on Suzanne Roberts Theatre, home to Philadelphia Theatre Company and the legacy of Suzanne Roberts, wife of Comcast founder Ralph Roberts.

Inquirer classical music critic Peter Dobrin broke the news this morning.

The Philadelphia Theatre Company is no longer making mortgage payments on its Suzanne Roberts Theatre building at Broad and Lombard Streets. The troupe stopped paying the mortgage in May 2012, theater leaders say… The theater had a balance on its mortgage of a little more than $11 million as of August 2012, according to its most recent tax return. Even without the burden of the mortgage payments, the theater – which had an annual budget of just under $5 million in 2012 – is struggling financially.

Read Dobrin’s entire account here.

The 365-seat theater opened inside the brutally ugly Symphony House in 2007, with about $8 million in combined aid from the state and city. The theater was the site of a contentious stagehands strike in 2013.