The Old School on Kentucky Avenue Just Got a New Name and a New Boss
September 10, 2026
September 10, 2026
Drive up Kentucky Avenue this fall and you'll notice the marquee reads differently than it did a year ago. The theater inside the Mountain Arts Community Center now goes by "The Ridge Theater," a name that didn't exist before January of this year. If you've lived here a while, you might assume the building just got a fresh coat of branding. What actually happened is bigger than a new sign, and most residents haven't clocked the part that matters most.
On January 1, 2026, the town of Signal Mountain took over day-to-day operation of the MACC from the Signal Mountain Elementary Preservation Fund, the volunteer nonprofit that had run the building's programming under a lease and management agreement with the town. The two sides mutually agreed to end that arrangement, and Signal Mountain's government became the center's direct operator rather than its landlord. That's the headline most people saw. The part underneath it is what actually changes how the building runs.
Here's where two different milestones get confused, and it's worth untangling them, because both are true and neither is the other.
Signal Mountain the town celebrated its own 100th birthday back in 2019, marking a century since residents incorporated their own municipal government, a story that traces back to the original Signal Mountain Inn and the streetcar that carried people up from the valley in the 1910s.
The building on Kentucky Avenue is a separate hundred-year story. It was constructed in 1926 as Signal Mountain Elementary School, a V-shaped structure with classrooms lining the outside and a 200-seat auditorium in the middle. J. Pope Dyer led the school from 1926 to 1934. The building served as a working elementary school for decades before it was transformed in 1999 into the Mountain Arts Community Center you know today. Former students marked their own reunion on Saturday, April 24, 2026, with a full day of events including a segment called "100 years in 20 minutes," alongside a memory wall and exhibits pulled from nearly a century of classrooms.
So if you've heard someone mention "Signal Mountain's centennial" and felt like the math didn't add up, that's because there are two centennials, seven years apart, tied to two different institutions that happen to share an address on the same mountain.
The town used the January transition to formally recognize the people who kept the MACC running before it became a municipal department. The Town Council adopted proclamations honoring Dick and Cheryl Graham, who served as co-directors of the center from July 2021 to December 2025, and renamed the theater "The Ridge Theater" at Mr. Graham's own suggestion. A separate proclamation honored longtime volunteers Art and Anne Hagood for their work in the MACC's outdoor gardens and grounds, and the town named the outdoor courtyard the Hagood Community Courtyard in their honor.
Town Manager Matthew Justice framed the handover as a vote of confidence in what the Grahams and Hagoods had built, saying the town was excited to assume managerial responsibility for MACC facilities and programming. It's a generous read of the transition, and probably an accurate one. It's also worth looking at what the town actually put in place to carry the work forward.
For four and a half years, the MACC had two people whose entire job was that single building: teaching classes, booking the theater, and keeping the courtyard and gardens in shape.
Going forward, oversight of the MACC sits inside a newly created role called Community Development Director, filled by Chelsea Ryden, a Signal Mountain resident with deep ties to the town. Her job doesn't stop at the MACC. She's also charged with communications, community engagement, economic development, and town branding, plus overseeing a new MACC manager position that will handle the building's daily operations underneath her.
That's not a criticism of the plan. It's a reasonable way for a small town to absorb a facility that used to run on volunteer hours and donor goodwill. But it does mean the MACC's future now competes for attention inside a much bigger portfolio, rather than being the singular focus of two people who lived and breathed it. Whether that trade works out in the building's favor is something residents will be able to judge for themselves over the next year or two, simply by watching whether class offerings and event bookings hold steady or start to thin out.
The good news, at least so far, is that the calendar hasn't skipped a beat. The Mountain Arts Community Center still runs its regular slate of instrumental lessons, from piano and violin to guitar and percussion, along with dance classes spanning ballet, contemporary, and Irish step for students from age three on up. Pottery students still have access to wheels and studio memberships, and the adult fitness classes, including yoga, are still on the books.
On the calendar specifically:
If you've been meaning to sign a kid up for pottery or finally take that ballet class you keep talking about, nothing about the ownership change has made that harder. The building is still open, the instructors are still teaching, and the courtyard still bears the Hagoods' name on a plaque you can walk past any afternoon.
None of this is a warning sign. Towns take over community centers from volunteer boards all the time, and plenty of those transitions go fine. The reason this one is worth understanding, rather than skimming past, is that it tells you something true about how Signal Mountain runs its civic life: for years, the thing residents pointed to as their town's arts and culture hub was actually a nonprofit operating on borrowed time and donated hours, not a permanent line item in the town budget. It is one now. That's a real shift, and it happened quietly enough that most people driving past the new marquee never clocked it.
If you care about what happens at the MACC over the next few years, the thing to watch isn't the theater's name. It's whether Chelsea Ryden's office keeps the class rosters full and the Christkindlmarkt on the calendar once the excitement of the handover settles into the routine of running a building alongside everything else on her desk. So far, the answer looks like yes. Worth checking back in a year.
Signal Mountain's civic life is one of the reasons people who already live here tend to stay a long time, and it's one of the first things I talk through with folks who are thinking about their next move on the mountain, whether that's up the road or somewhere new entirely. If you're weighing a change and want a straight answer about what your home is worth in today's market, or just want to talk through what's happening in your specific corner of Signal Mountain, reach out to Deonne Taylor Homes. Let's connect, get your free home valuation, and figure out what's next together.
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