When our doors opened in 1925, the grand Palace Theater was billed as the “Pride of Hilo.” 100 years later, the Friends Of The Palace Theater needs your support to continue to restore the auditorium in honor of a century of standing tall in Downtown Hilo. After ten+ years of important capital improvements ranging from the installation of air conditioning to the expansion of the solar array, we are turning our efforts to the interior of the auditorium. 

With the help of volunteers and skilled contractors, we’ll break the work into small, manageable projects. We will remove and replace carpet, strip and repaint bannisters, unify and color match wall panels. Bins and shelves will be purchased to keep our backstage storage areas streamlined and organized. Contractors will be hired to continue patching holes in the ceiling.

These plans will make a huge difference in the theater, but we need your help! Each project needs supplies like paint, brushes, scrapers, sand paper, paint thinner, bins, shelves and more. Our dedicated volunteers deserve lunch, and those lunches should be purchased from locally owned businesses. The carpet installation and ceiling project will require skilled labor. And patching the ceiling holes will cost a pretty penny (we estimate upwards of $25,000 for the large one over the stage). We’ve created a way for you to maximize your support by donating directly to the project you’d most like to impact. Click a button below to contribute to the campaign!

If you’d like to volunteer or are a business owner and would love to make an in-kind donation of materials, labor or even food for volunteer meals, drop us a line at development@hilopalace.com, or give our box office a call at 808 934 7010.