While Long Island Ducks baseball team owner Frank Boulton is most synonymous with sports in the area, he is also a philanthropist and a lover of music and live performance. As a part-time New York City resident, he and his wife, Karen, are regular theatergoers to Broadway and other venues. So, it was a natural extension of their shared passion for the arts when they purchased the 261-seat, stadium-style theater on Main Street in 1997, and donated it to the Great South Bay YMCA.

The Art-Deco-style theater has been closed since 2020—when it was hit hard due to the pandemic—like so many other venues. This severe financial strain was exacerbated due to not being given the financial aid that many other local theaters received to continue operations, after the unprecedented shutdown. These hardships were compounded when the theater’s marquee collapsed in late September.

“In 1997, my wife and I bought the theater, and I have been very involved in the formation of the Great South Bay YMCA and would serve as chairman of their board for a number of years, and now I’m on the Long Island board of the YMCA, but I bought the building and gave it to the YMCA, and we raised money and renovated the theater, and for the last 18 years it has been a performing arts center. Marvin Hamlisch, Bryan Adams, Timothy B. Schmit from the Eagles, Richie Havens, and The Jonas Brothers actually played there, as did Spyro Gyra and Leon Russell. We’ve had a very long history of great artists, and when the pandemic struck, like many theatres, it was shuttered. So, in March of 2020, the theater closed, as well as my baseball team. The Ducks didn’t play baseball for all of 2020,” recalled Boulton, who has set his steady gaze on not only returning the venue to its former glory, but even adding elements to make it more vibrant and current than ever.

The theater was constructed within the erstwhile Regent Movie Theater, which was built in the early 20th century. When the Regent closed its doors in the late 1980s, it stayed shut until it was given new life by being purchased by longtime area residents, the Boultons.

One of the reasons that a patron of the arts such as Boulton was desperately needed to revive this once-thriving performing arts center is that it didn’t receive the financial assistance that many other venues received in grants and aid in the aftermath of the pandemic, such as the Save Our Stages Act (SOS), a $15 billion bill which provided emergency funding to venues focused on live performances as well as movie theaters, and was passed in 2021 by Congress.

Boulton grew up and still resides in Bay Shore-Brightwaters.

“So, when the Save Our Stages money was available to other theaters on Long Island, the Boulton Center was a part of the YMCA, and they were not entitled to participate in the Save Our Stages money, so it made it a little tougher on the Y, because they didn’t receive the money that the Argyle, down the road, and the Patchogue Theatre got. These people got millions of dollars, and the Y didn’t,” Boulton said.

The Ducks owner explained why he, personally, decided to step up at this pivotal time.

“So, the YMCA has been looking for a way to either strike a strategic partnership or come up with an avenue where they can get to put it back online, and it just became obvious to me that I was the one. So, I did that and we’re going to contract, and the deal should close sometime by the end of March, and then I’ve hired a company to do a design on a new marquee. The building was built in 1914,” he said.

While the deal hasn’t been officially finalized yet, to the determined and savvy entrepreneur, it’s a fait accompli. In fact, he has already hired a Springfield, Ill., company to design a new marquee for the building’s edifice to give it a present-day glow-up, while still staying true to the bold, geometric Art-Deco architecture.

“So, the theater is in very good shape on the inside. The renovations that have to be done are mostly, definitely, the marquee,” Boulton said, adding, “The YMCA still owns the building at this point. We’re in contract, and there’s some things that have to be done prior to me closing the deal, but I’m going to do it.”

The Boulton Center for the Performing Arts was an asset to the community from the early 2000s, until the pandemic. And it served the community for almost two decades with its eclectic entertainment.

“We’ve had a great run presenting top-notch entertainment in an intimate setting, in the center of downtown Bay Shore. This is not only Bay Shore. It’s South Shore, it’s Long Island. People come from all over to go to the Boulton Center, so we’re going to put that part of it back online. I think there’s a ‘bandwidth.’ What does that mean? It means we’re going to look to have more sides to it, whether it’s a little more theater, a little bit more bringing in authors, possibly like the Huntington Book Revue. So, they would bring in authors. When people write books, we’ll bring them in like the [recently closed] Huntington Book Revue did, and they’d have a sit-down and they’d talk to the author, and they’d sell a bunch of books. I’d like to do that as well.” said Boulton.

While the theater may harken back to the Jazz Age in its design, when it reopens it will be ready for the 21st century.

“I’m setting the theater up for streaming, so now we can stream concerts and make that available to a wider audience that maybe if you’re sitting out on the East End of Long Island and you’d like to see a performer at the Boulton Center, now you can subscribe and see that on a streaming service. Just to use the box in a creative way,” said Boulton.

The forward-thinking Boulton plans to use the venue for educational purposes and informative lectures, as well as for entertainment. He also aims to start a film festival there, or to participate in one of the great film festivals that are already here on Long Island.

“I think it’s an important economic engine, and it’s a little engine, but it gets a lot done. It’s brought a lot to the community in the past, and it has a lot of blue sky going forward,” Boulton assured.