KVMR & Nevada Theatre: The Bridge Street Project

KVMR 89.5 Community Radio and the Nevada Theatre Commission, assisted by the community at large, collaborated to build an 8,000 sq.-ft. building behind the historic theater at the corner of Bridge and Spring streets in Nevada City. It creates a new home for the award winning radio station and adds needed backstage space to California’s oldest theater.

“The new radio station creates, with the Nevada Theatre and the Miners Foundry, a Performing Arts District in downtown Nevada City,” says Michael Young, director of the Bridge Street Project capital campaign.

The project is called Bridge Street because the building is located at 120 Bridge Street, joining seven houses that share that short street in downtown Nevada City. The project also “bridges” the radio station and the theater by connecting them at the theater’s back wall and enabling the broadcast of theater programming over KVMR’s airwaves.

The KVMR building includes a community room that doubles as performance studio and is open to area nonprofits for meetings and gatherings. The steel radio tower recently erected over the building serves as a new community cornerstone and will be atop a “community corner,” where people can congregate and view display cases of upcoming events. The tower also has a WiFi antenna to provide Internet service to the historic downtown. For more information, visit BridgeStreeetProject.org.

(Photo: Jessica Faulks)