• SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- Downtown Sioux Falls in its heyday was home to seven movie theaters, but filmgoers since the early 1990s have been heading to the malls to sit in front of a big screen.
• Those longing for the old days will get their chance to go retro next year with the long-awaited reopening of the State Theatre, a circa-1926 vaudeville and silent movie house that for the past decade has been undergoing a slow but steady multimillion-dollar renovation.
• "It's a landmark," said 91-year-old Sylvia Henkin, whose family donated $500,000 to the project. "Every kid that had a dime would go down there and see a cartoon or a movie, and they brought first-class, first-run shows there."
• Crews are working to transform the newly renamed Sylvia R. Henkin State Theatre into a "historically preserved theater with all the modern amenities," said executive director Stephen Williamson.
• While visitors will be sitting in an auditorium restored to the crimson-and-gold Beaux-Arts look from 1926, they'll be looking at a high-definition, digital projection surrounded by thundering high-fidelity sound.
• The facade's facelift is complete, the marquee illuminates South Phillips Avenue each evening and the reconstructed lobby is ready for concessionaires. Crews have upgraded the heating, air conditioning and plumbing throughout the three-story concrete and steel building, which is as structurally sound as a bomb shelter.
• The theater will return in 2013 with just the main level open, seating about 400 people. The 350-seat balcony will likely open sometime in 2014, and there's no target date for reconstruction of the theater's original Mighty Wurlitzer organ, Williamson said.
• A complete restoration of the detailed stenciling that adorns the walls and ornamentation around the towering organ pipe chambers will take more time. Much of the stenciling was either covered with paint or drilled out to attach aesthetically displeasing acoustic tile, but artists will have original photos from which to work.
• "The stencil work alone will take years to redo," Williamson said.

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