Upon the completion of The Palace Theatre’s Education Center, the Georgetown theater will have expanded into its fifth building in the historic downtown area.

The theater launched a $2.5 million Envision campaign in July to build a new children’s education center at Second and Rock streets. The Palace Theatre owns three buildings in the downtown area—the main Palace building at 810 S. Austin Ave., the Tin Barn on Ninth Street and the education center on Eighth Street—and this summer rented 817 S. Austin Ave. to serve as the practice and performance space for 7- to 9-year-old children, Executive Director Marissa Austin said.

Austin said she has served as executive director at The Palace Theatre for the past 2 1/2 years and said during that time she has seen the different programs experience exponential growth. According to the theater, 208 students were enrolled in workshop classes in 2012, and by 2015 the number had increased to 590.

“We have just been exploding out of the seams, particularly with our children’s programs,” Austin said. “So we’ve been looking at it strategically. How can we grow and support future growth? Because obviously Williamson County itself is growing, and we will have more and more children coming in.”

Austin said the theater began looking for a location to build a new education center and performance space when Georgetown businessman and landowner Sam Pfiester came forward and offered land in the downtown area.

“[My wife] Rebecca and I have been long-time supporters of The Palace,” Pfiester wrote in an email. “Their children’s program is so successful that the existing facilities are unable to accommodate their needs, so we offered a 10,000-square-foot tract to help with their capital campaign to build a new children’s theater.”

The donated land is within a flood plain, so the education center is designed to be elevated, which is beneficial for the theater, Austin said.

“That actually gives us additional space. We’ll have room underneath the building for outdoor classroom space or receptions,” she said. “We’ll have lots of possibilities, kind of like a park-like setting underneath the building.”

The facility will include a 200-seat theater, a lobby, green rooms and dressing rooms, a dance and vocal studio, classrooms, offices, craft rooms and space for storage. The different areas are meant to be multifunctional, Austin said, so the space can adapt to serve future growth in the theater’s educational programs.

Carl Illig and his wife are involved with main stage productions at The Palace Theatre, and his daughter has also been involved in children’s programs. In an email, he said the expansion will serve more children and offer a wider selection of programs, many of which have been a huge benefit to his daughter.

“I’ve watched her and many other children grow in the two years that we have been involved in the theater. What I see happening is the children are gaining confidence,” he said. “Their self-perceptions are improving, they are learning responsibility and teamwork, but most importantly they are having fun.”

An anonymous donor also pledged $1 million for the project, though The Palace Theatre must match that amount with $1 million in gifts and pledges by Oct. 1, Austin said. The Envision campaign has raised nearly $500,000 as of Sept. 4, she said.

“We’re inching up on the halfway mark [of the $1 million]; we just need some more donors to help us get the rest of the way there,” Austin said.

If the theater raises $1 million by Oct. 1 to get the $1 million match, organizers will need to raise an additional $500,000 to complete the Envision campaign. Austin said The Palace Theatre has more time to raise that amount. The building is tentatively scheduled to open in late 2017.