Joe Downtown: Group working to preserve Huntridge memorabilia opens office

By Joe Schoenmann

Monday, March 31, 2014 | 6:30 p.m.

Another group dedicated to preserving slices of Las Vegas’ past is opening a new office downtown.

The Huntridge Foundation, which seeks to preserve items from the Huntridge Theater’s past, is opening its office and kicking off its “Memory Project” starting Friday.

The new office is in the Downtown Spaces building, 1800 Industrial Road, Suite 108. The Memory Project is intended “to document and preserve Huntridge Theater memorabilia and materials for a historic archive and database,” says a foundation press release.

All donated items will be catalogued and kept by the Special Collections Department of UNLV Libraries. Photos, playbills, fliers, programs, ticket stubs, oral histories, videos and other items related to Huntridge Theater activities will be included.

Donors have two choices: give their historic item to the foundation or allow the foundation to return it after scanning or photographing it.

The public is invited to attended Friday’s mixer from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. A raffle will include clothing and bar tabs provided by The Atomic, body painting by Skin City Body Painting, Las Vegas Burlesque classes, traffic citation vouchers from The Law Offices of Parviz Heshmati, Shoestring Promotions event tickets and more.

Refreshments will be provided by Bonanza Beverage Co and Vin Sauvage.

The Huntridge Revival, LLC, is currently behind an effort to restore the 70-year-old theater, which is at the southeast corner of Maryland Parkway and Charleston Boulevard. The group collected more than $200,000 in funds via an online crowdfunding campaign last summer. It is seeking to buy the theater for an estimated $4 million by June. It has estimated the cost to renovate the theater at $11 million.

In February, the Las Vegas Historical Society announced it was moving into a new office at 1114 S. Main St. The society is collecting photos — not famous photos, but family-album photos of Las Vegas with historical significance — which it hopes to one day curate in a downtown photo museum.