Images courtesy of The Montauk Playhouse Community Center Foundation
The Montauk Playhouse Community Center Foundation is opening multi-use community spaces in the long-empty western portion of the Playhouse building, furthering Montauk’s appeal and enriching our community.
Shrouded behind the towering stucco facade of the Montauk Playhouse, a new era is being kicked off in Montauk for summer 2025 as the new $14 million aquatic and cultural centers near completion.
After a year of construction, the aquatic center and the large second floor of new multi-use community spaces are due to be completed in June and the Montauk Playhouse Community Center Foundation will unveil the realization of a vision some 25 years in the making later this summer.
The two swimming pools will both be on the main floor of the aquatic center: a 1,000-square-foot shallow pool for aquatic therapy, fitness programs and swimming lessons for youngsters; and a 75-foot long, four-lane wide athletic lap pool for adult swimming and more advanced aquatic training. Changing areas and men’s and women’s locker rooms will ring the swimming facilities.
“A vision some 25 years in the making.”
On the second floor will be a multi-use cultural center, with flexible event spaces and community rooms. The work was originally intended to be done in two phases,
The aquatic center was among the founding visions for the Playhouse when East Hampton Town acquired the cavernous building in 1999. The Playhouse was originally built by Carl Fisher in 1929 as an indoor tennis facility and had sat largely empty for decades.
In 2003 the town undertook a 3-year renovation of the southern half of the building into the current gymnasium, fitness center, daycare room and town annex.
The western half sat empty, awaiting the funding support to complete the final phase of the project.
The cost of the pool construction was a public-private partnership between East Hampton Town, which kicked in $5.5 million toward the project and the Playhouse Foundation, which raised more than $8 million. New York State also gave the project a $1.7 million grant.
“This is probably one of the largest community projects in Montauk for which funds have been privately raised, an accomplishment that is a testament to our community’s philanthropic and civic-minded members,” Sarah Iudicone, President of the Montauk Playhouse Community Center Foundation Board said at the project’s kick-off last winter.
Iudicone said that the foundation continues to seek funding support from those in the community to help boost the programming that the aquatic and cultural centers will offer to Montauk’s residents and.
“We need our community to support and take ownership of this exciting project to help it thrive and to bring its promise from vision to full reality.”
