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Although he was an understudy (so to speak) for today's program, the Club's very own Mike Spellman received an award for the guest speaker in a leading role for the day. Mike, who is former President and long time Board member for Lakeshore Players Theater, provided a history of Lakeshore Players and discussed their recent move to a new home in White Bear Lake. He indicated that Lakeshore Players was founded in 1953 and that "Ah Wilderness" was their first play. They continued to do performances and in 1959 purchased an old church as their first home. In 1969, the church burned down and the Theater group then purchased an different church as their home. Lakeshore Players continued to use the church as their home for many years.
In 2012, the organization conducted a feasibility study to consider raising money for a new theater. The feasibility study indicated that the potential range of costs for a new theater was between $3.5-$8.0 million. Based on this feasibility study, Lakeshore Players embarked on a capital campaign to raise money for a new Theater for the group. In 2016, they purchased a former nursery property located on Highway 61 in White Bear Lake and took down the buildings. They officially broke ground on the new Theater in 2017, and in 2018 Lakeshore Players opened a new state of the art Theater with a 250 seat auditorium. The new facility has allowed tremendous expansion of their theater programming and offerings to the community. He presented a power point presentation that outlined the entire process and also showed pictures of the beautiful new facility.