Gary Lovelady, left; Curtis Johnson; and Dexter Suttle take down a ceiling inside a vacant building on Chattanooga Street in LaFayette, Ga., on Friday. Michael Lovelady recently bought the Mars Theater and seven vacant buildings at the intersection of Chattanooga and Villanow streets and is renovating them.RENOVATING MARSAnyone with old photos of LaFayette’s Mars Theater or the adjacent commercial buildings can call Michael Lovelady at 404-915-6939. A Facebook page has been set up to track progress at the site under the heading “Mars Theater District Inc.”
If you have a photo of the old Mars Theater in LaFayette, Ga., Michael Lovelady is dying to see it.
He’s hoping to hang a re-creation of the long-missing marquee over the front doors again as part of a renovation he’s started at the theater, which burned in 2011, and the adjoining strip of vacant commercial buildings on Chattanooga and Villanow streets.
The trouble is, no one knows exactly what the old marquee looked like.
“We’re trying to find any kind of photos we can,” said Lovelady, who declined to say what he spent to buy the property.