Salt Lake City’s Tower Theatre, closed for 5 years, just revealed its big renovation plan. Here’s what we know.

The Tower Theatre, one of the oldest movie houses still standing in Utah, took the first official step toward an ambitious renovation project — one that would keep its main theater, restore some of the original facade and add several smaller screening rooms.

The Salt Lake Film Society, the nonprofit that operates the Tower, filed preliminary concept drawings with Salt Lake City Building Services on Wednesday — which the film society said in a news release Thursday “marks an exciting but very early step in a long process” to restore the landmark in the city’s 9th and 9th neighborhood.

Drawn by Salt Lake City architectural firm Prescott Muir, the plans call for maintaining the main auditorium, which sat 380 people when the theater first opened in 1928.

The plans include a new second floor above the main theater, featuring an event space with its own screen and projector. And the Tower would get a basement with three smaller screening rooms — called “microcinemas” — as well as a speakeasy and updated restrooms. For the first time, the building would also have an elevator.

Right now, designers intend to bring back some of the Tower’s original castle-like facade that gave the theater its name. According to the plans, the masonry tower on the east side of the property remains intact under the terracotta tile facade that was built in the 1950s, and it will be restored.

The west tower, which was destroyed in the ’50s remodel, will be “digitally recreated” based on the east tower’s design, the plans indicate, “so that cinematic projections can cast onto the ‘ghost’ tower at night.”

The marquee will be rebuilt, according to the plans, and the wall above it will be clad in the ’50s terracotta tile. The overall effect, the explanation says, “is intended to illuminate [the theater’s] history rather than further conceal it behind ever more contemporary designs.”

The plans also call for the roof to be arrayed with solar panels. The film society noted in its news release that it already has received a “significant” donation to show a commitment “to energy efficiency and sustainable building practices.”

Tori A. Baker, executive director of the Salt Lake Film Society, said in a statement that “the drawings submitted are an early phase of the journey. They are not final designs, but rather the beginning of a conversation about how we preserve and prepare the Tower for generations to come.”

Jennifer Neal, who lives in the 9th and 9th neighborhood, said Thursday she’s thrilled that the Tower may reopen after such a long closure.

“It’s the lifeblood that could bring so much traffic to 9th and 9th,” said Neal, who used to work as a volunteer for the Sundance Film Festival at the Tower. “It’s the heart of the neighborhood.”

A timeline for starting or completing the renovation has not yet been set, Baker told The Salt Lake Tribune on Wednesday. Baker said she hopes to reopen the Tower for its centennial in 2028 — but that will depend on the success of the nonprofit’s fundraising efforts.

Kristina Robb, chair of the East Liberty Park Community Organization, which advocates for area businesses, said there’s “a huge joy” at seeing a formal plan.

But neighboring businesses, she said, would prefer “to see some activation right away.”

That could mean staging some outdoor concerts and other events in front of the venue, members of her group have suggested. “We’re in the baby steps” of proposing those ideas, she said.

The Tower, Robb added, should also keep in mind what seems like a generational divide among fans, even in her own family. “I have beloved experiences with the Tower, but my children don’t care at all,” she said.

The Tower had operated continuously, more or less, from its 1928 opening until March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced the film society to close both the Tower and the six-screen Broadway Centre Cinemas in downtown Salt Lake City.

The Broadway reopened in October 2021, 19 months later, but the Tower has remained shuttered. Baker announced a renovation initiative, “Tower Theatre: The Next 100 Years,” in 2023 — shortly after the nonprofit bought the theater building, which it had rented for decades.