On August 25, Cambridge City Commissioner Brett Summers made a surprise announcement at the council meeting, that there were plans to rehabilitate the old Tolley Theater on Race Street into an Arts center. If successful, it could help reinvigorate that part of town and expand the Arts community of Cambridge.

The building at 515 Race Street had been an Art Deco-style cinema since the 1920s. In the forties, it was the State Theatre, part of the Schine Circuit. It operated until at least 1950. Later, it was purchased by Gene and Shirley Tolley and given their name.

The 500 block of Race Street was listed as an Endangered Maryland site in 2014. This area is particularly significant because it reflects the evolution of decades of commercial development in Cambridge during the first part of the 20th century.

Gene was saddened when changing times forced the theater’s closure because it was “something for the young people to do.” In 2014, the Tolleys were operating a restaurant supply and catering business out of the building. They considered reopening the theater but feared that the condition of some nearby vacant buildings might keep customers away.

Still, in August of that year, Gene told the press that he wanted to work with a developer. “We want to see it stay as a community theater and showplace.  Somewhere for entertainment or activities.  Whatever we do we want the developer to respect it and keep it as a theater basically.”

But Gene died in 2020.

This year, Shirley approached Summers about what could be done with the building.

He thought they could create a nonprofit called Friends of Dorset Performing Arts Center. Rob Collison of Cambridge Title Co. drew up a contract. The next step would be to form a planning committee.

Initially, $300,000 would be needed for the leaky roof, rust, and other repairs. But the overall renovation would cost millions. The floor, which is even now, would be dug up and converted back to its original slanted design. The old balcony had, at some point, been turned into a second movie screen, and that would be changed back, as well.

Summers is putting out the word to designers, builders, and others. However, there’s currently not a lot of money to put toward the project. The committee would want to acquire money from the state but also draw in a benefactor. This could be helped by the interest in the venue already shown by such entities as WHCP radio.

A South Carolina native who has lived in Cambridge since 2000, Summers has a passion for the town and believes strongly in improving the quality of life here. That would include creating an arts center to compete with Easton’s Avalon Theater. It is an ambitious but worthy endeavor.

Flooding is the country’s primary natural disaster. In Cambridge, it is mainly due to the city’s location as a coastal community. In order to counter the effects of flooding here, Cambridge resident Larry White and a team of experts decided several years ago to create a mitigation plan. On the evening of September 9, the team provided an update on the project in the form it has today.

The flood mitigation endeavor is part of what became known as the Cambridge Shoreline Resilience Plan, the purpose of which is “to comprehensively evaluate factors and conditions contributing to both existing and future flooding problems.” Elements of the plan include documentation of the planning process, identification of flood hazard risk, and development of strategies to reduce floods risk vulnerability and improve resiliency.

The meeting opened with comments by City Manager Glenn Steckman, who said the flood mitigation project must go through or Cambridge will continue to have flooding on and beyond Water Street, by the marina. Appealing to citizens concerned with economic impacts, Steckman mentioned that greater flooding would affect events such as Ironman. He also reassured taxpayers that all the funding is federal money. For these reasons, he said, the mayor and city council support the project.

White recounted the origins of the project, which were previously covered by the Spy in this 2024 article. As he told the attendees of the meeting, the project has acquired 10 grants totaling $22 million, but they’re applying for more, including from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), requesting an additional $20 million. Next April, the city will seek a construction grant of $4 million, by which time the final design for the project will be well on its way to completion. However, FEMA will have another six months to decide if it will provide more money. All told, the project is looking at wrapping up in 2028.

Anna Johnson and Megan Barneia of BayLand Consultants & Designers went over the design, explaining that proposed flood protection would include an embankment (earthen, rockfill, and road raising) and a living shoreline with such features as a reef protection structure, stone breakwater, shallow water habitat, and sand dunes with plantings.

The design would deal with stormwater in several ways. Underground storage areas would include storage pipes with stone bedding, and drainage for smaller rainfall events would be accomplished with gravity while larger storms would be handled by pump stations, located in underground wet wells, that discharge over earthen berms.

After that part of the presentation, Dr. Kenny Rose of Horn Point Laboratory talked about the focus on habitat benefits of the living shoreline, which will be studied through species models and lists as well as field sampling.

For more information, visit the project website.