ARCADIA, Fla. — A historic piece of Arcadia is back to ground zero. We’ve shown you the progress made at the Heard Opera House over the last year, and now all the hard work volunteers put in has been turned to rubble.
Hurricane Ian turned the theater into an open-air facility. The storm blew out windows and the main wall.
“It actually took out the entire framing, right from the concrete, just ripped it out,” Krissy Constantino said.
She and her family have poured their heart and soul into the community centerpiece. When she walked up the steps to the opera house for the first time….
“It was surreal and horrific and scary. Couldn’t believe my eyes,” she explained.
But bigger than the fear of the damage, Krissy felt relief because originally, she and her family had planned on staying in an attached apartment next to the opera house since it was a floor above the ground compared to her home seven minutes away.
“We were all packed and ready to go and then last minute gut decision said let’s just stay home, and that was a life-saving decision,” Constantino said. “The wall actually fell on top of the apartment and the apartment fell into the first floor antique shop so we would have lost our lives, my family.”
The show will go on, but first, there’s a lot of clean-up to do. Contact the Historic Heard Opera House on Facebook if you would like to help.
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