On December 17, 2025, photos hit social media showing every orchestra-level seat pulled out of the former Proctor’s Theater, the building Carmella was converting into city hall. The images landed awkwardly against months of Administration assurances about preserving the theater’s historic character.
Communications Director Alex Horton said the seats would go back in and floated an “adopt a seat” program currently in development.
What no one disputed: the project carries no legal obligation to preserve anything, because it does not use historic preservation tax credits.
What Was There
Proctor’s Theatre opened on November 23, 1914. Architect Arland W. Johnson designed it for impresario F.F. Proctor at a cost of $325,000, roughly $10 million today. When it opened, it was the largest theater in New York State. The press called it “a structure ranking foremost in American theatrical circles.”
The building is five stories of glazed terra cotta in a Neo-Gothic style, with rusticated columns bearing lion’s heads at street level, engaged marble columns rising to gargoyle-like figures at the roofline, and two towers decorated with colonettes, dentils, and escutcheons. Inside: a tiled lobby with arched ceilings, gold leaf on the arches, a Lafayette mural by artist David Lithgow on the proscenium showing the French general’s 1824 visit to Troy, elaborate chandeliers, and ornate plasterwork originally painted gold. The double-balcony auditorium seated 2,283. Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Jimmy Durante, and Fred and Adele Astaire all performed there.
The theater closed in 1977. The last show was a screening of The Longest Yard. About 170 people showed up.
The Long Failure to Save It
The city acquired the building in 1978 after foreclosure. It sat. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute bought it in 2004 and proposed gutting the interior for office space while preserving the facade. The community organized against it. In 2011, Columbia Development Companies announced a $14.4 million restoration project with a $3.3 million Restore NY grant. The theater auditorium remained dormant while the surrounding office and retail spaces were brought back into use.
For decades, Trojans hoped someone would finally restore Proctor’s as a performing arts venue. When Carmella announced in June 2025 that the city would take over the building and convert it to city hall, some people were relieved. At least someone was doing something with it.
What Is Actually Being Built
The construction plan calls for a modern “box-in-a-box” structure inside the theater auditorium to house the new city council assembly chamber. Michael Lynch, treasurer of the Troy Proctor’s Foundation and a preservation engineer, said plainly: “You won’t be able to go into the theater anymore because they’re building a big box in the middle of it.”
The gilded plasterwork. The Lafayette mural. The double balconies. The space where Benny and Hope performed. None of it gone. Just sealed off inside a government office building, inaccessible to the public.
RPI proposed something similar in 2004. The community fought it and won. What’s being built now is the same outcome, dressed in different language.
The SHPO Letter
The Administration said the State Historic Preservation Office endorsed the project as an adaptive reuse model. Steele disputed this on the floor at the November 6 Finance Meeting.
The letter does not commend the project. It does not call it a model.
What SHPO actually said: reversible work would have no impact on the historic property. The Administration’s interpretation was that they were doing the work reversibly and that SHPO had therefore blessed it. Lynch identified the gap: “The city took that and said, ‘we are doing it reversibly,’ and that’s where there’s a disconnect.”
Because the LDC is not applying for historic tax credits, SHPO has no enforcement role regardless. The Administration can call it preservation without any legal obligation to preserve.
The Numbers and the Lawsuit
Building purchase: $1.8 million through the LDC. Renovations: approximately $8 million. Guaranteed maximum price: $10.6 million. Bonding authorization: $12.5 million. The Administration justified the cost by noting the city was paying more than $700,000 per year to rent its current space. Steele flagged a separate $1.6 million furniture purchase at the December 17 meeting where the seat photos circulated.
Lynch noted that LDC ownership “places some limitations on what the taxpayers of the city can do to influence the elected officials in making decisions, because now it’s the LDC, not the City Council.” Foundation president Erica Veil challenged the 30-year financial projection: “It’s not even just the fact that it’s the building that it’s too late for. It’s taxpayers, what we’re going to be saddled with.”
The Troy Proctor’s Foundation filed a 91-page lawsuit against the LDC on February 14, 2026, alleging SEQRA violations and irreversible damage to the building’s historic character.
Partisan angle: Trojans spent decades fighting for Proctor’s. They beat back RPI’s office conversion in the early 2000s. Carmella sold city hall as the building’s salvation. What’s going up inside the auditorium is a government office box. The Administration called it preservation. The only thing legally required to be preserved is the facade.
Sources: WAMC, December 17, 2025; WAMC, December 18, 2025; CBS6, lawsuit; CBS6, acquisition; Spectrum News, November 5, 2025; WAMC, June 17, 2025; Wikipedia, Proctor’s Theater; Troy City Council Finance and Regular Meeting, November 6, 2025 (transcript)