UPDATE: DID ready to decline Golden Apple loan

The Golden Apple Dinner Theatre will have to wait another week before it finds out if the Downtown Improvement District will give it a $144,000 loan.

Without that money, the 40-year-old dinner theater’s owners say they may have to close their doors permanently.

Owner Robert Turoff said the combination of the Palm Avenue parking garage construction, which will last until December, and the Five Points roundabout construction, which is scheduled from July to November, will eliminate all his customer parking.

“I’m aware what we are asking is extraordinary,” Turoff told the DID board March 23. “We have exhausted all other avenues.”

Because one of the board’s five members was absent, the DID put off a decision until next week, but there’s no mistaking which way some of the board members are leaning.

“We need to figure out the minimum it takes to keep you going,” said DID Chairman Larry Fineberg. “But not with dollars.”

Fineberg and board member Andrew Foley are looking for a way the DID, the city and the Golden Apple can work together to create signs that direct customers to available parking.

Contact Robin Roy at [email protected].