Construction officially began at Cincinnati's historic Regal Theater on Wednesday morning, with a ceremony held at 11 a.m. to mark the start of work transforming the long-shuttered West End venue into the Robert O'Neal Multicultural Arts Center. The theater, built in the 1900s, once hosted vaudeville performances, live jazz, and feature films before falling dark decades ago.
According to WKRC, the ceremony was held specifically to celebrate the beginning of construction at the Regal, which the station describes as one of the last architectural spaces representing historical Black culture in Cincinnati. The theater originally opened in 1914 as the Casino Theater, designed by the architectural firm Zettel & Rapp with 1,500 seats and a stage built for vaudeville, according to Digging Cincinnati History. It was renamed the Regal Theater in 1941.
From Movie Palace to Decades of Decay
The Regal's fortunes turned in the early 1990s. Per The Port, the venue was converted into a three-screen cinema in October 1991 before closing permanently in 1996 amid broader economic decline in the West End. The building sat neglected for years afterward, at risk of demolition, until the Hamilton County Landbank stepped in.
The Landbank acquired the deteriorating theater in April 2013 and invested more than $150,000 in initial structural stabilization work to keep it standing, the same account from The Port notes. That intervention bought time for a long-term redevelopment plan to take shape, one that would eventually tie the building's fate to the legacy of a Cincinnati arts icon.
Honoring Robert O'Neal's Legacy
The Robert O'Neal Multicultural Arts Center, known as ROMAC, was established in 2019 by CEO Toilynn O'Neal Turner to honor her late father, Robert O'Neal, a prominent Cincinnati artist and civic activist who died in 2018 after more than 50 years of community work, according to Soapbox Cincinnati. The organization set its sights on the vacant Regal as the physical home for that mission.
The revitalization plan calls for a complete restoration of the existing 17,000-square-foot theater structure alongside a planned 20,000-square-foot expansion, which will house art galleries, studios, performance space, and co-working areas for Black creatives, Movers & Makers reports in coverage of the project. That scope goes well beyond simple building repair, reflecting ambitions for a full-fledged cultural campus in the neighborhood.
Funding and Historic Status Clear the Way
Getting to Wednesday's groundbreaking required years of public investment and regulatory milestones. The Regal Theater was officially listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2023 under criteria recognizing its Beaux-Arts architecture and its significance to African American history, per 91.7 WVXU.
That designation helped unlock further funding. The state of Ohio approved $1.2 million in Ohio Historic Preservation Tax Credits in late 2024 to support the multi-million-dollar rehabilitation, and in June 2025 the state awarded a $486,000 brownfield cleanup grant to remove asbestos and other hazardous materials from the structure in preparation for major redevelopment, the same station's reporting shows.
Execution of the September construction kickoff involves a partnership between Sanders Development Group, 8K Construction, and DNK Architects, working alongside ROMAC and The Port, according to an Eventbrite listing for the kickoff event.
What the West End Stands to Gain
The stakes for the neighborhood run deep. The Regal stands as the last remaining historic movie house and cultural venue in the West End following decades of community displacement caused by Interstate 75 construction in the 1950s and the more recent demolition of the nearby State Theater to make way for FC Cincinnati's stadium, Soapbox Cincinnati notes. For a neighborhood that has repeatedly lost its cultural landmarks, the Regal's rebirth as a home for Black artists and creatives carries weight well beyond the building itself.
