Uptown Theatre, Kansas City, Missouri

The Uptown Theater, opened in 1928, is a historic theater located in the Valentine neighborhood of midtown Kansas City, Missouri. As Uptown Building and Theatre, the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The Uptown hosted movies as well as live vaudeville and stage productions through the 1970s. By the late 1970s, the theater began to function primarily as a concert venue, and it remained that way until it closed its doors in 1989 as a result of back taxes. Following the closure, the property was transferred to the Land Trust of Jackson County, whose president Larry Sells resigned from the Trust in 1994 to purchase the still vacant theater. After a $15 million renovation in which 33,000 square feet of lobby, bar, and office space was added, the 1,700-capacity space has been in operation ever since.