Walk down Tampa Avenue West this month and the building looks whole again. The exterior walls went back up this spring, the theatre's name is back on the facade, and from the street it reads like Venice Theatre never lost a season. It has lost four.
That gap between what the building looks like and what it actually is right now matters if you live here, because the theatre you can currently buy a ticket to and the theatre everyone is waiting for are two different rooms. The Jervey Theatre, the 432-seat mainstage that took the brunt of Hurricane Ian's winds on September 28, 2022, is still not selling tickets. Individual tickets for the rest of Venice Theatre's 77th season went on sale June 1, but the theatre's own event page is explicit that shows slated for the Jervey will go on sale later in the season. The building looks done. The room isn't open yet.
A show that was mid-tech when the storm hit
The clearest way to feel the length of this rebuild is through one production. When Hurricane Ian tore through the Jervey in 2022, the cast of "Kinky Boots" was already deep in rehearsal, on track to open October 21. Director and choreographer Brad Wages had blocked most of the big numbers. Music director Michelle Kasanofsky had taught every song. Scenic designer Tim Wisgerhof's set, including a pair of 16-foot sparkly red high-heeled boots, was already built and sitting in the scene shop when the walls came down around it.
The show got pushed to a 2024 run in a borrowed space. Then in January 2024, Venice Theatre postponed it again, and executive director Kristofer Geddie told subscribers something that turned out to be the actual plan all along: "Kinky Boots" would become one of the first major productions to open in the restored Jervey once it was ready. Reporting from Fox 13 in late August 2026 confirms that plan is still on track, with construction crews finishing interior work and a February reopening targeted around that same production. A show that was three weeks from opening night when the roof came off is now scheduled to be the show that reopens the room.
What's actually happening between now and February
Here is the sequence, as it stands today.
- October 2025: The rebuild reached its "topping out" milestone, the point where the final structural steel beam went into place.
- April 2026: Exterior walls were completed and the theatre's name went back on the building, though the bulk of remaining work moved inside, where repairs have to happen in a specific order while the theatre keeps operating around them.
- May 2026: The Jervey's original 432 seats were confirmed to be returning, alongside new safety features, a stage lift, and a new orchestra room that didn't exist before.
- August 21, 2026: Fox 13 reported construction teams had the walls up and interior work moving toward a February reopening, with "Kinky Boots" as the show. The theatre is holding its final public construction tour on September 24, a two-hour walkthrough before the site closes to the public ahead of opening.
- February 2027: The targeted reopening, which falls within the theatre's 77th season.
The theatre's own homepage still frames the goal as "Help reopen the Jervey Theatre in 2027," which lines up with that February target rather than contradicting it. The 77th season runs from mid-2026 into 2027, so a February reopening sits comfortably inside that window even though it reads, at a glance, like a different year than the one everyone has been fundraising toward since 2022.
If you want to see the raw construction before the doors close for good, September 24 is the date. After that, the next time the public sees the inside of the Jervey, it will be finished.
Two venues carried four years of shows
While the mainstage sat gutted, Venice Theatre didn't go dark. It shifted its full production calendar into two smaller spaces on the same campus at 140 Tampa Avenue West: the 90-seat black box Pinkerton Theatre, and a temporary 124-seat thrust stage built inside the Raymond Center, a building named for donor Carole Raymond that was originally slated to become the theatre's Arts Education Center. Between those two rooms, the theatre kept running seasons of shows for four years on a fraction of the seating it used to have.
That's also why the county has more recently gotten involved. Venice Theatre went back to Sarasota County commissioners this spring asking for funding to convert Raymond Center space into classroom studios, separate from the Jervey rebuild itself. At the May meeting, District One Commissioner Teresa Mast raised concerns about fairness to other applicants who might not have had the same chance to adjust their funding requests. Commissioners ultimately approved $2 million for the Raymond Center project after the theatre lowered its budget ask, a reminder that the Jervey reopening isn't the end of construction on that campus, just the end of the biggest piece.
The money still isn't finished either
The full Jervey rebuild carries a $25 million price tag, a number that surprised even the people running the campaign. As of March 2026, the theatre had raised more than 80 percent of that goal, roughly $20 million, with donors William and Sara Gill matching new gifts at the million-dollar level through May. The "Have a Seat" program lets individual donors name one of the 432 seats for $7,500. As of Fox 13's August 21 report, organizers still needed the final $5 million to close the campaign completely, even with the building nearly ready to open.
"We must rebuild. We have to. We owe it to this community," Geddie said, describing the moment he stood in the gutted Jervey and could see straight through to the bridge outside.
Why the gap has shown up on Venice Avenue, not just onstage
The theatre's absence hasn't only been a loss for people who buy season subscriptions. Local business leaders told Fox 13 in 2025 that downtown revenue had dropped by roughly 30 percent since the Jervey closed, a figure tied directly to the foot traffic a full-capacity mainstage used to send onto the surrounding blocks before and after curtain. Venice Theatre's own executive director has put it plainly: Venice without a fully functioning Venice Theatre isn't quite Venice.
That drop is easy to miss if your routine downtown doesn't already revolve around a show night. But if you've eaten a pre-curtain dinner at Cassariano Italian Eatery on a Saturday in the last four years, you've been eating in a smaller crowd than the one a 432-seat sellout used to generate two blocks away. The Saturday morning Farmers Market at Centennial Park has kept its own separate rhythm through all of this, unaffected by the theatre's construction schedule, which is its own small reminder that Venice runs on more than one clock at once. The theatre's clock has just been running slower than most.
For comparison, not every Venice landmark takes four years to come back. The Venice Fishing Pier at Brohard Park sustained its own hurricane damage from Helene and Milton in the fall of 2024 and was fully repaired and reopened to the public by September 29, 2025, a rebuild that cost just over $410,000 and took about a year. The Jervey's rebuild is a different order of project entirely, both in scope and in cost, and it's worth holding both timelines in your head if you're trying to track when Venice actually feels whole again.
What to actually do with this
If you want to see the inside of the Jervey before it's finished, RSVP for the September 24 tour through the theatre's advancement office before the site closes to the public. If you're waiting to buy tickets for the reopening show, watch the theatre's own events page rather than assuming a February date means tickets are already live. And if you've been avoiding downtown Venice on a Saturday night because it's felt quieter than it used to, that's not in your head. The number backs it up, and it has a reopening date attached to it now.
Venice residents have spent four years watching one building on Tampa Avenue West go from destroyed to under construction to, finally, almost finished. The sign is back up before the show is. That's worth knowing before you plan around either one.
If you're already part of this community and thinking about what's next for your own address, whether that's finding more space, downsizing, or just understanding what your home is worth as downtown fills back in, The Nix Team is glad to talk through it whenever you're ready.
