COLUMBIA, Md. — The longtime Toby’s Dinner Theatre in Columbia is set to get a brand-new building soon.
Howard County announced the performing-arts institution will be demolished, then rebuilt as part of a $68 million arts-and-cultural center.
The “New Cultural Center” will be on the current site of the Toby’s building, which is 45 years old and across from Merriweather Post Pavilion.
County Executive Calvin Ball said in a statement today:
Building upon the legacy of Toby’s Dinner Theatre, this new public amenity will bring together arts, culture, education, and recreation opportunities for residents of all incomes and ages.
Besides a 340-seat space for Toby’s Dinner Theatre, the New Cultural Center will include a 200-seat Children’s Theatre, a 200-seat Blackbox Theater, a 1,600-square-foot public arts gallery, an 800-square-foot dance studio, and almost 7,000 square feet of classroom space for arts education.
It also includes a 174-unit housing development called “Artists Flats,” for different income levels – “the first mixed-income residential development in Downtown Columbia,” according to the county’s housing commission director Peter Engel.
The county expects to break ground on the New Cultural Center in early 2025, and complete all parts of it by spring of 2028.
The existing Toby’s Dinner Theatre operation will be run by the nonprofit CCTA (Columbia Center for Theatrical Arts), and the new dinner theater part of the center is expected to be done by spring of 2026.
The county said in a press release:
This marks an exciting new era of opportunity and expansion for Toby’s, which is a beloved community institution that regularly sells out shows to broad audiences.