By Kyle Petty

Editor’s note: This story was first published by dsm magazine on Aug. 26.

After a decade-long intermission, the lights are coming back on at the Ingersoll Dinner Theatre. With a simpler new name, The Ingersoll is set to reopen in November with live entertainment and full-course meals, reviving a hot spot that opened almost 90 years ago. Over the years, it evolved from a movie theater to a live theater and, later, a series of short-lived ventures in the early 2000s. For a hot minute, it was even an after-hours club.

In 1939, the local entrepreneur and philanthropist Abraham Harry “A.H.” Blank built the building at 3711 Ingersoll Ave. to become one of Central Iowa’s first theaters to show movies with sound, or “talkies.” He hired the local architecture firm Wetherell & Harrison, the same team behind the Varsity Cinema, the Hiland Theatre and the Forest Theatre (which now houses Creative Visions).

By the 1970s, the theater had switched to live performances. In 1978, local producer and director Charles Carnes moved his Purple Cow Dinner Theatre from a Grimes campground into the building and renamed it the Ingersoll Dinner Theatre. It staged popular productions like “The Wizard of Oz” and “Miracle on 34th Street” and became a mainstay of the city’s entertainment scene.

But by the 2000s, the curtain had fallen. The space hosted an after-hours club in 2004, a Cuban restaurant in 2010 and a handful of short-lived nightclubs that never quite caught on. The lights went dark, the doors closed, and at least one raccoon moved in for an extended engagement.

Now, after years of false starts, a new act is ready to begin. Connor Delaney, CEO of White Oak Realty, bought the building with plans to revive the dinner-theater experience from the Carnes era, with live entertainment and elevated food and drinks. “We’re retaining what historic elements remain,” Delaney said. “Our goal is to pay homage to the institution that he created.”

Read the full story here.