Hopewell's Theater Reopened in April. Some Residents Are Still Waiting for It.

Search "Hopewell Theater hours" this week and you will land on a listing marked CLOSED, a phone number that used to work, and a website still promising a restaurant that never quite opened. Meanwhile, around the corner on South Greenwood Avenue, a brick building with roots in the 1880s has been hosting line dancing nights, a Paul McCartney tribute act, and a live improvised film score since April. Both buildings trace back to the same address history. Neither one is the theater most people think they're looking for.

If you live in Hopewell Borough and haven't been to a show since the old Hopewell Theater went dark in 2024, you have missed five months of programming at the same address under a new name, while the venue actually called Hopewell Theater is still waiting on the Borough for permission to stop being a restaurant.

One address, five names

The confusion starts with the building itself. The site at 5 South Greenwood Avenue dates to the 1880s, when it opened as Columbia Hall, a community center that doubled as the local fire company's headquarters. That structure came down in 1940 and reopened a year later as a movie house called the Colonial Playhouse. George Gallup bought it in 1960 and ran it as a polling operation through the mid-1980s, when it became the Off-Broadstreet Theater. Mitchel Skolnick bought it in 2015, raised the ceiling, added a balcony, and renamed it Hopewell Theater. By the time it closed in 2024, the site had been a public gathering place in one form or another for 144 years.

Rising costs and the inability to get a liquor license, historically a live venue's main source of income, made the math stop working.

What reopened in April 2026 is a different organization operating out of the same walls. The Hopewell Valley Arts Council, a nonprofit that Carol Lipson helped found in 2014, took over the space and renamed it Hopewell Valley Stage. It is not a rebrand of the old business. It is a nonprofit program running in a building that used to house a for-profit one, which is exactly the kind of distinction that gets lost when a Google result just says "permanently closed."

What's actually on at 5 South Greenwood right now

Hopewell Valley Stage didn't just reopen and stay open. It ran a deliberate six-week pause over the summer to fix things before building a real fall season. According to public relations coordinator Sarah Cuneo, the venue used the break to overhaul its projection system, which means it can now screen films for the first time, something it put to use for a Cinema Improv performance on September 4, where musicians improvised a live soundtrack to a film in front of the audience. The venue also added an Aeolian baby grand piano, new curtains, and a permanent tap pouring Needle Creek Farm Brewery beer, with concession partnerships now running through local names like The Gingered Peach and Aunt Chubby's Luncheonette. Members with VIP tickets can preorder dinner from Antimo's Italian Kitchen for table delivery during a show.

The venue also hired a full-time production manager, Corey Ross Jenkinson, because the technical setup shifts with nearly every act on the calendar. That calendar, visible now at hvstage.org, lists timed events on September 11, 12, 18, and 19, then continues into October on the 2nd, 3rd, and 16th. Theater manager Maeli Goren-Wilson has described the approach as intentionally exploratory, testing formats from classic rock to salsa nights to a children's Saturday program called Aesop Romp!, which pairs performances with an informal play group at the nearby gazebo park.

Lipson has been direct about what she thinks sets the venue apart from a typical night out. "We want people to feel like they belong here," she said of the hospitality-first approach behind the flexible seating.

The biggest date on the books isn't a concert at all. The 19th Annual Hopewell Tour Des Arts runs Saturday, September 26, and Sunday, September 27, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., with more than 60 local artists and 12 bands performing across four stages around town, including the Hopewell Train Station and Calvary Baptist Church. This year, Hopewell Valley Stage is the event's Welcome Center, handing out maps and hosting a One Piece Show featuring a single work from every participating artist. Admission is free.

The theater still waiting on the Borough

Here is where the confusion compounds. The organization that ran the original Hopewell Theater, led by co-founder Sara Scully alongside Mitchel Skolnick, hasn't folded into the nonprofit next door. It's building a second location around the corner at 7 West Broad Street, the former home of Brothers Moon restaurant.

That space isn't renovated yet. As of the most recent public update, the Hopewell Theater group still needs the Borough to formally approve changing the property's use from restaurant to dine-in theater before any construction can start, and only after that can it apply for its own theater liquor license. Scully has said the West Broad Street reopening is targeted for late 2026 or early 2027, which means residents checking the old Hopewell Theater website for showtimes this fall will keep finding a placeholder, not a schedule.

The two organizations aren't competing so much as running parallel tracks toward the same regulatory finish line, for a reason that has nothing to do with either one's programming.

Why both needed the same law to move at all

Neither reopening was really possible before 2025. New Jersey passed a law that year expanding which theaters can serve alcohol, covering nonprofit and for-profit venues along with small movie houses, and Hopewell Borough followed with its own ordinance allowing local theaters to apply. Scully was among those who pushed for the state bill alongside the advocacy group ArtPride New Jersey, which has cited the state's nonprofit arts and culture sector as generating close to $692 million a year and supporting nearly 13,000 jobs. Without a way to sell a glass of wine before a show, both theaters were trying to make the same math work that shut the original one down. The law didn't guarantee either reopening. It just made one possible for the nonprofit and gave the for-profit group a path worth pursuing again.

What this means if you live here

If you've been treating "Hopewell Theater is closed" as settled fact, it's worth updating that. The building is open, the calendar is real, and the easiest way to check it is directly at hvstage.org rather than trusting whichever old listing surfaces first in a search. If you want the fuller picture of what's coming to town, the Tour Des Arts on September 26 and 27 is free, self-guided, and uses the Stage as its home base this year, which makes it a low-commitment way to see the renovated space for yourself.

The other theater is still coming. Not this month, and by the organizers' own timeline, maybe not until spring. When it does open at 7 West Broad Street, Hopewell will have two working venues around the corner from each other, run by different people with different missions, sharing nothing but a name history and a short stretch of downtown. Knowing which one is which now will save you a confused phone call later.

We spend a lot of time paying attention to what's actually happening in the towns we work in, not just what a listing sheet says about them. If you're curious what else has shifted in Hopewell Valley this year, or you're thinking through a move here and want someone who tracks these details for a living, The Terebey Relocation Team is a good place to start that conversation.