The Minnesota Opera is spiffing up the Lab Theater in downtown Minneapolis and giving it a new name: the Luminary Arts Center.
The North Loop venue, which is in the midst of a $6 million renovation, will open in September. At 224 seats, it will house not only some Minnesota Opera productions but be available for performers and troupes to rent.
"We put some good work into it to make it safer and more exciting artistically," Minnesota Opera President Ryan Taylor said. "I'm excited for everybody to see it and for us to be able to have it as a space for a relationship with the community at large."
Better known for its big productions in St. Paul's 1,900-seat Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, the Minneapolis-based nonprofit purchased the former warehouse space in February 2019 for $1.9 million, according to county property records.
The venue has been a performing arts destination since 1988, when the Guthrie Theater launched it as a secondary stage to develop new work. With the Guthrie's move in 2006 to a new three-stage riverfront complex, independent producer Mary Kelley Leer took over the space, filling the Lab with theater, dance and burlesque acts.
In the meantime, the North Loop has undergone rapid redevelopment. Concern that an important arts venue might become a parking garage prompted the opera to step in.
"Many groups used it and thought of it as their home," Taylor said, pointing to the recent sale of Aria, formerly home to Theatre de la Jeune Lune, as evidence of development pressure in the area. That events center, which hosted occasional performances, has now become a church.
The Minnesota Opera already owned three North Loop warehouses, renovated in 1990, that house its headquarters, rehearsal spaces, costume shop and storage. The new Luminary Arts Center will bring the opera's total Minneapolis campus to 62,500 square feet.