Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center lands $6 million expansion grant

Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center won a $6 million capital grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, moving a long-discussed expansion closer to reality on Main Street. The plan would raise the theater’s 425-seat capacity to somewhere between 600 and 700, deepen and widen the stage, add a new stagehouse, improve backstage areas, and create classrooms, rehearsal space and a rooftop reception area that could make the venue more useful beyond a standard show night.

Executive Director Julienne Penza-Boone said the funding underscored the center’s role in children’s, adult and senior programming and in downtown economic life. WHBPAC says more than 600 students take part in after-school classes and summer camps in a year, about 100 volunteers contribute nearly 4,400 hours annually, and more than 27,000 playbills were printed last season. Expanded seating and more flexible programming could mean more ticket inventory, larger productions and more visitors moving through Westhampton Beach’s business district.

The center’s history shows why the next phase matters. Prudential’s Westhampton Theatre opened in June 1933 with former Gov. Alfred E. Smith on hand, later became a United Artists house, and by the mid-1990s was viewed as headed for demolition. Len Conway and Lon Sabella led the rescue effort, buying the rundown theater for $300,000 in May 1997; within a year, volunteers had raised 60 percent of the $2.8 million needed to restore it, including a $250,000 gift from the Mollie Parnis Livingston Foundation.

The new state money follows a separate $4 million award from Southampton Town’s Community Preservation Fund in 2025, bringing known public support for the project to at least $10 million before private fundraising and other financing are counted. Town records also show a June 23, 2025 public hearing tied to a public access and benefit agreement for 76 Main Street. NYSCA says its capital projects program is meant to advance accessibility, sustainability, placemaking and community development, and the state said June 2 that it had awarded $82.2 million to 132 projects statewide. For Westhampton Beach, the grant is not just an arts headline, it is a public investment that could reshape foot traffic, bookings and the year-round economy around the center.