The Capitol Theatre (note the new URL), located in Port Chester, NY, was built in 1926 and has been the home for a number rock concerts over the years, including shows by Pink Floyd, Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, and others. By the 1980s, the theatre began to book less and less concerts and more recently it has been used for events like weddings and bar mitzvahs. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.

Ex-Wetlands owner/current Brooklyn Bowl owner Peter Shapiro, in partnership with Bowery Presents, plans to begin booking shows there again, with a re-opening planned for mid-2012. According to a press release,

"The Capitol Theatre is a rock and roll icon and we are going to treat her as such," says Shapiro. "We are going to spoil her and give her the best of everything - the best sound, the best lights, and the best video projection technology of any theatre anywhere. Our plan is to turn the knob to 11 in every way possible."

John Moore of Bowery events also had this to say:

"Since spending Thanksgiving weekend 1992 at the theatre with Phish, I've dreamed of promoting at The Cap' one day," says John Moore, partner at The Bowery Presents. "We are excited to partner with Peter on the reopening and introduce a new generation of talented performers to its legendary stage, as well as reacquaint some of the biggest names in music with the house. We look forward to creating memorable concert experiences and reestablishing Port Chester as a destination for music lovers."

The Capitol has a 1,835-capacity, 65-foot ceiling, a general admission floor, seated balcony, VIP seats, and six presidential box suites. Its Port Chester location is 22 miles from NYC and is accessible by I-95 or by taking the train from Grand Central to the Port Chester Metro North station.

The NY Times points out that there may be some competition from other local theaters:

The 500-seat Ridgefield Playhouse in Connecticut, which is about 30 miles from Port Chester and puts on about 100 concerts a year, insists that musicians not play within 60 miles for two months before a concert and one month after. The Paramount Center for the Arts, a 960-seat theater in Peekskill, N.Y., also about 30 miles from the Capitol, in recent years has presented shows with Gregg Allman, Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, and the B-52s. It has even stricter stipulations: bands must not play within a 90-mile radius for two months before and three months after a concert.

But Shapiro has said that he "would not make similar demands of acts, partly because he does not consider it necessary. The Capitol, he argued, is much larger than those other stages, so he can court a different caliber of band."

The Paramount's demographic also differs from most Bowery Presents shows. Hopefully The Capitol will start bringing more interesting shows to Westchester, like fellow (but smaller) Westchester venue Tarrytown Music Hall has done with shows like Jeff Tweedy, Andrew Bird, Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, and The Zombies (not that Tarrytown isn't also bringing in plenty of shows for baby boomers). We'll probably see a lot of similarities between The Capitol and NJ's similarly-sized and Bowery-booked Wellmont Theater which is also about the same distance from NYC in another direction. The Wellmont gets everyone from Chicago to Passion Pit to Dark Star Orchestra.

A picture of The Capitol's interior, Peter Shapiro at the Okayplayer holiday party, some old fliers and the full press release, below...

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