It looks like “Finding NemoJr.” will have to find a new home.

Public assemblies including city council meetings and the theatrical adaptation of that Pixar tale will be all but banned from Franklin Opera House in two weeks while the city scrambles to fix decades of neglect. 

Fire Chief Michael Foss is making good on his ultimatum issued last summer that he will declare the Opera House unsafe on July 25 unless a building permit has been issued to fix a slew of fire-code violations in the 128-year-old building. Although Franklin city administration has issued a request for proposals from companies to do the work, using $60,000 approved by the City Council in February, it is extremely unlikely that the ultimatum will be met.

Foss said he plans to give the city a notice of hazardous conditions at that point outlining fire code violations as straightforward as lack of signs, as large as a lack of a sprinkler system and as complicated as dealing with hidden “void spaces” where fires can linger or spread. The last line of the notice says “failure to comply may result in injury or death.” 

“I’m not going to chain the doors,” Foss said, but the department would stop providing a fire watch, when one or more firefighters stays in the building during assemblies of more than 100 people to speed response in case of an emergency. It will be up to the City Council to decide what to do, he said; the council indicated Monday that they would not continue meeting in the Opera House in that case. 

The Franklin Area Children’s Theatre production of “Finding NemoJr.,” set for the weekend of Aug. 4-5, will also have to be moved. But city offices in the building which do not draw large crowds at a time will be allowed to remain open.

Foss said if the city gets a building permit for the upgrades, which would involve hiring a contractor for what could be millions of dollars worth of work, “We would work with organizations that want to do assemblies there.”

The potential shutdown of the city-owned building at 316 Central St. is no surprise. Fire chiefs warned as far back as 1960 about conditions but governments in often cash-strapped Franklin have consistently put off repairs and upgrades.  

The building is part of Soldiers Memorial Hall, which was built in 1892 for the Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternal organization for Civil War veterans. Over the decades it has housed the police department and a courthouse, and is now home to city administration offices and is used by the Franklin Footlight Theater, which will hold a production of “Beauty and the Beast” over the next two weekends.

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