The Fredonia Opera House will be temporarily closing for renovations Jan. 15. P-J photo by M.J. Stafford

The Fredonia Opera House will close for six weeks on Jan. 15 as a long-awaited seat replacement project begins.

Rick Davis, executive director of the opera house that’s in the same building as Village Hall, said there will be “a complete replacement of the theater’s seats.”

The project “has been in the works for quite some time,” he said. The uncomfortable seats are probably the most common complaint about the venue, Davis added.

He explained the seats were installed in the 1920s and made for the smaller people of the time, at 15, 17 and 18 inches wide. The replacement seats will be 19, 21 and 22 inches wide.

The row of seating closest to the orchestra pit will be eliminated “so that in the back two sections we can give people more legroom,” Davis continued.

The hardness of the current seats contributed to the round of complaints about them. However, all of the new seats will be fully upholstered. “Right now about two-thirds of the seats have wooden backs to them,” Davis said.

The wheelchair area will also be brought up to full compliance with the current Americans with Disabilities Act rules. Its sloped floor was grandfathered in when the Opera House was saved from the wrecking ball and massively renovated in the mid-1980s. The new project will create a level area above the sloped floor.

In addition, “We thought the timing worked to replace the main curtain in the stage, which is 35 years old,” Davis said. The hand-cranked curtain will be replaced with a motorized version.

The project is funded through grants and donations, with no money from Village Hall.

“Truthfully, we didn’t ask for any funding for it because we know the financial constraints the village is in,” Davis said. “We’ve been quietly fundraising for a couple years towards this project. We’ve also been working on a couple grant applications for this project since before COVID.”

He said the Opera House got a grant from the New York State Council of the Arts. That opened up access to a grant from the Chautauqua County Partnership for Economic Growth, he added.

The Opera House is scheduled to reopen March 1 for a “Live at the Met” viewing. “We were assured the project can be completed by then,” Davis said.

“We think our patrons will be excited about it afterwards when they see the seats. I think they will appreciate their appearance, but even more the comfort.”

The current seats were offered to other theaters — they didn’t want them for the same reasons Fredonia’s opera house is getting rid of them, they are small and uncomfortable. Davis said some patrons have asked for seats that are part of endowments.

All endowed seats will be transferred to new ones during the renovation. Their plaques will read the same as on the current seats, Davis said.