The Penn Theater’s new owner, Bryan Frenchak, invited the community to “take a seat” at the venue this weekend — literally.

“We thought, ‘Well, let’s give the chairs away,’” Frenchak said. ”If somebody wanted to give a donation they could — if not, then we’ll give them to them because we thought then people will have a slice of history from the Penn Theater.“

Megan Hepler, marketing coordinator for the theater, said the two-day event was an opportunity to prepare the space for renovation and raise awareness for the project.

“So, with the new plans, a lot of the chairs in here they wanted to get out so that we could completely renovate it,” Hepler said. “So we’re calling it ‘Take A Seat,’ presented by the Penn Theater, where people can come in and donate a certain amount of money, whatever they feel, to get a set of three chairs that were used at the Penn Theater.”

Take a Seat was held Saturday and Sunday, April 22-23, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. And it was not just a matter of spring cleaning, according to Hepler, it was also a “sneak-peek” for the county of what is to come.

“We have all the lights on, we have the blueprints out, and we have a little space where people can go in and see what the theater looks like,” she said. “I know a lot of people haven’t seen it. But I know some people have told me that they worked here 30 years ago, so they wanted to come see what it looked like, they wanted to come check out what the plans are.”

One of those ex-employees, Jack Laughner, brought his family Saturday to reminisce.

“I worked here, and I also worked up at the drive-in, which was then called Pioneer Drive-In, now it’s the Starlight Drive-In,” Laughner said. “But it was the same family that owned both theaters, and I would bounce back and forth. It was a great job, and it was a lot of fun. I loved it.”

Laughner, who recently moved back to the county after 20 years, said he was excited to share his memories of the theater with his children.

“You know, we’ll get to share those memories together now, because we go to the drive-in and they love it,” he said. “Once they fix this place up, we’ll definitely be here all the time, and I’ll relive the memories I had growing up with them.”

For years, Laughner said, he has been telling his wife about the theater and following hearsay about its eventual reopening.

“This is really exciting, because throughout the years I’ve heard rumors about ‘someone’s going to buy it’ or ‘someone’s going to do this or that’ but nothing ever materialized,” he said. “But, you know, this looks like the real deal, so I’m very excited.”

While crews worked to unbolt the theater’s approximately 300 seats, Frenchak and a team of volunteers spent their time giving guided tours and outlining plans for the new “multipurpose venue.”

“Once we get the chairs out of here, we’re going to start construction Monday on the back wall,” Frenchak said. “Then once we get the back wall fixed, we’ve had some degradation there, then it’s the new AC on top, and then we’ll start with the main floor area of the theater that currently slopes.”

Frenchak said the team plans to tier the main floor for a variety of events.

“The biggest thing is now we’ll be able to separate that into three platform areas,” he said. “So, three level areas so that we can do events and have it multipurpose where we can set up chairs for up to 400, or we can go ahead and put maybe 200-plus people and have a cafe-style sit-down dinner. We’ll most likely cater food in and have a bar area in the back.”

Frenchak said his wife, Marina, was the impetus for the whole project.

“I know everybody was very questionable about why we were doing this,” Marina said. “There’s no other reason except to bring it back to life and make families happy.”

Marina, who is originally from Argentina, said she fell in love with the theater and the county after marrying Bryan, a former resident.

“I peeked into this theater, and I called my friend and said, ‘I want to get this theater and live upstairs and show movies from the 1930s, and we can all get dressed up,’” she said. “So, when we heard that they were going to tear it down, we said, ‘No, we need to stop this and bring heritage back in a contemporary way.”

As testament to their love for the county, Marina said that she and Bryan own and operate a Butler-themed restaurant in Houston, Texas, called the Butler House.

The county’s heritage, she said, was what made it so alluring.

“It’s definitely its heritage — every single person that I meet, every single restaurant that I go to,” Marina said. “Your menus — shepherd’s pie — I mean, it’s real. It’s home.”

Bryan and Marina agreed that the weekend event was about getting people excited about this shared, community space.

“This is really more about awareness, getting people excited for what’s hopefully coming soon,” Bryan said. “Hopefully by September, October.”

In the short lead-up to the event, which was organized in early April, Hepler said it has generated an enormous amount of feedback in the community.

“People were messaging me saying, ‘This is a great idea, I’d love to have a set,’ or ‘I really want to see what they’re doing,’ or ‘I’m so glad someone bought it,’” Hepler said. “So, that sort of solidified it, and when I told Bryan that he was like, ‘Let’s do it, I mean, people really want to come and see the theater and have a piece of it, let’s do it.’ That generated a lot of buzz.”

As part of the event, Hepler said they invited visitors to provide contact information to become Penn Theater “ambassadors” as the venue approached its opening.

“So you could get a VIP chance to come to a soft opening or get our email blasts to find out what we’re doing,” Hepler said. “We really want to get people’s feedback as in what they want to see, what events they want to see happen.”

Hepler said Bryan has already begun looking into a variety of opportunities for the theater in preparation for a fall opening.

“He wants to do a lot of performances, musicals, you could even rent it out for a wedding or reception,” she said. “Upstairs we have another, smaller theater where he wants to do kind of maybe conferences or presentations, where it’s more private but its still a theater-feel.”

For Bryan, the project is all about community.

“It’s just building a sense of community — the whole vibe is to go ahead and bring the Penn back with the hope that it is the impetus behind bringing back Main Street Butler,” Bryan said. “So we’re excited about it.”

The Take a Seat event is just the first step in a larger effort to involve the community with the theater, according to Bryan.

“The hope is, as we create the nonprofit for this, that we can go ahead and give back to the community,” he said. “You take care of the community, the community will take care of you.”