Sunday, September 18, 2016 The Kirby at 30 Sean McKeag | Times Leader The F.M. Kirby Center for the Performing Arts has illuminated downtown Wilkes-Barre since 1986 and has been a bright spot on the city’s business and cultural communities. The Kirby Center has been the gold standard for events, but it started humbly – with a meeting between two giants By Bill O’Boyle
[email protected] WILKES-BARRE — It was sometime in the mid-1980s when Gus Genetti heard a knock on his offi ce door. Genetti, whose family has owned and operated a hotel/convention center in downtown Wilkes-Barre since 1979 — the same hotel that opened in 1906 as the Reddington — got up from his desk and walked to the door. “When I opened (it), there was nobody there — until I looked down,” Genetti said. There, at his door, on his hands and knees, was Al Boscov, who had File Photos purchased the former “Fowler, Dick & In photo at left, Kirby Center catalyst Walker — The Boston Store” in 1980, Al Boscov, left, enjoys opening night at when he changed its name to Boscov’s. the venue on Sept. 19, 1986, with F.M. Al Boscov, who said he had seen a Kirby II and Kirby’s wife, Walker. In photo tremendous void in the downtown since above, the Times Leader front page from the former Paramount Theater closed the following day. in 1977, was there to ask Genetti, and eventually hundreds of others in the not just to the Paramount and fi ne arts, a Barnes & Noble, a movie theater and tial spending of $1.73 million at down- community, for help.