Atlanta’s Rialto Center plans first major upgrade in 30 years

Changes are afoot at Georgia State University’s Rialto Center for the Arts ahead of its 2026-2027 season.

The venue, located in Atlanta’s Fairlie-Poplar district downtown, is planning a $150,000 renovation to its mezzanine and lobby, its first major upgrade since reopening in 1996. It is also switching its subscriber model to memberships and expanding its arts programming, which will include reestablishing a film screening series.

The changes are an investment in the Rialto’s future, Executive Director Amy Reid said, and an embracing of changing dynamics in live events over the last several years.

“We want to honor where the Rialto has been over the past 110 years and past 30 seasons, but we still want to move forward in our changing world,” said Reid, who handles day-to-day operations and management for the venue.

The Rialto opened during the silent movie era in 1916 as Piedmont Theatre, said to be the largest theater in the Southeast at the time. The business languished toward the end of the 20th century and shut down in 1989. Years later, Georgia State University raised $14 million to demolish and rebuild the Rialto as a performance venue, reopening in 1996.

In the following decades, the Rialto has become a popular destination for dance, jazz and music performances, as well as competitions, student productions and lectures. The space has also been rented out for private parties and other events.

The venue hit a setback during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to a yearlong shutdown and nearly two years of reduced operations. In many ways, the Rialto is still recovering from the pandemic’s upending of the live events ecosystem, which is true of most, if not all, performance venues in the country.

Attendance is still lower than it was before the pandemic. It has been slow to rebuild.

“We’re working our way (back),” Reid said. “I think we’re really getting able to say, ‘Hey, we’re here, we’re kicking, remember us?’”

Subscriptions to the venue’s ticketing package, which allowed patrons to buy tickets for multiple performances at a discount all at once, are also down from the pandemic. So venue leadership decided to switch to memberships, which provide discounts on tickets but don’t require patrons to order them all at once.

The Rialto has spent two years resuming and expanding its offerings after its regular programming fell by the wayside during the pandemic. These include the free lunchtime performing arts series “Feed Your Senses,” which takes place in the Rialto’s lobby at noon on the third Wednesday of each month, and installing quarterly art exhibitions under a new partnership with Atlanta art gallery The Sun ATL.

In October, the venue will debut a new screening series, made possible by upgrades completed in 2023, when the Rialto invested about $350,000 to install a new projector and a 35-foot motorized screen. Previously, the venue would have to rent the equipment to hold film screenings and movie premieres. The Rialto is looking at Halloween titles, student and family-friendly films and even classics on 35 mm film, Reid said.