The new Royal George Theatre development will include special features to pay tribute to its past.

Tim Jennings, executive director of the Shaw Festival, said the redevelopment will include plaques, public art, interpretive panels, digital storytelling and commemorative landscaping to honour the theatre’s history in the area.

“We really tried to dig into what we can do to provide a sense of conservation,” said Jennings.

Jennings, with Meika McCunn, a design associate with Unity Design Studios, which is creating the new Royal George Theatre, told the Oct. 1 Niagara-on-the-Lake heritage committee how the proposed $50-million redevelopment of the theatre will commemorate the site and the surrounding Queen Street neighbourhood.

Jennings and McCunn outlined a series of ideas, including salvaging some building material such as beams, doors and possibly decorative gates at the house at 178 Victoria St. which, along with 188 Victoria St., is scheduled to be demolished.

The development will have plaques, exhibits both inside and outside the theatre, digital displays including oral histories, 3-D scans of salvaged historical items and archival film clips.

The commemorative landscaping will include ornamental planting on Victoria Street to “soften the transition between the larger scale of the rehearsal hall and the finer-grained residential fabric,” Jennings said.

A small landscaped courtyard will be created between a “ghost façade” on Queen Street and the entrance to the new Royal George Theatre. It will “act as a threshold between past and present,” Jennings said.

McCunn said the landscape will “acknowledge the layers of the land” highlighting Niagara-on-the-Lake’s important history that predates Loyalist settlements.

Ilustration: Design for new Royal George Theatre with “ghost façade”. © 2025 Unity Deisgn Studio.

The ghost façade to be created on Queen Street will be a reinterpretation of the 1970s neoclassical “temple-front” design by architect John Peter Stokes.

Jennings said it “acknowledges and preserves” the intent of the existing façade as a stage set. He said officials have been in discussions with the owners of the Queenston Quarry to use limestone in a creative way as part of the proposal.

Jennings said he wanted the heritage committee to provide its comments about the plan as soon as possible to avoid any delays in the project. The committee will discuss the plans at its November meeting.

Shaw Festival has submitted an application to rezone the area to general commercial from residential to allow for a theatre use and an expanded rehearsal hall. A larger theatre and loading dock will be built on the property.

The project at 83-85 Queen St. includes a new three-storey theatre with a basement level and fly tower. The proposed design maintains a two-storey street wall along Queen and Victoria streets, with the third storey and fly tower pushed back and obscured by landscaping and green walls.

Demolition permits must still be approved by the heritage committee and council to remove the buildings at 79 and 83-85 Queen St.

By Keven Werner for www.niagarathisweek.com.

Photo: Present Royal George Theatre.