Why the Sunrise Theater Named Its Stage After the Woman Who Saved the Bookshop

Kimberly Daniels Taws stood under the Sunrise Theater marquee on a Thursday evening in April, waiting for a ceremony that would put her name on a wall she'd spent years walking past. Friends and family had gathered inside for the dedication of what the theater is now calling The Kimberly, the indoor stage where movies give way to live music, community theater, and the occasional Met Opera broadcast beamed in from across the ocean. Aimee Haley, board chair of the nonprofit Sunrise Preservation Group that owns and runs the building, put it simply that night: this is more than a building, it is the heartbeat of the community.

That line does a lot of work if you already know what the Sunrise has survived to get here.

A Building That Keeps Getting Rescued

The structure at the heart of downtown Southern Pines started in 1898 as the S.S. Thomas hardware store, the first brick building in town. It didn't become a theater until September 23, 1941, when it opened with a screening of Joel McCrea in "Reaching for the Sun." Three years later, in December 1944, the Stewart & Everett Theatres chain took it over, and for the next four decades it ran as a working movie house.

Then it stopped. By the early 1980s the Sunrise had closed, and the building sat in real danger of demolition. What saved it wasn't a developer or a chain. It was the Arts Council of Moore County and the Sandhills Little Theater, who rallied enough local support to restore the space and reopen it as a performing arts center. That partnership held until 1998, when the Arts Council handed operations to a new nonprofit built specifically to protect the building: the Sunrise Preservation Group. Ownership of the property itself followed in 2005.

Count forward from that first 1941 screening and this year marks 85 years since the Sunrise became a theater at all. The building has now spent more of its life being rescued and reinvented than it ever spent as a plain movie house, which is worth sitting with before assuming a stage dedication is just a plaque and a ribbon.

The Bookseller Who Became Part of the Theater's Story

Taws didn't grow up in Southern Pines. She came from New York City, and in 2010 she made what by her own description was a considerable shift, both geographic and cultural, when she bought The Country Bookshop downtown. She's called it her dream job in a dream town. What isn't as widely known is that her involvement didn't stop at the bookshop's front door. She became part of the Sunrise's own effort to renew itself, the kind of behind-the-scenes work that rarely gets a headline until a theater decides to put your name on a stage.

The pairing makes more sense the longer you look at it. Two of downtown's oldest surviving institutions, a bookshop and a movie house, both nearly lost at some point in their history, both kept alive by people who moved to Southern Pines and decided the place was worth investing in rather than just visiting. The Country Bookshop has spent the past several months rolling out new membership options and a subscription service of its own, a parallel effort to build sustainable support rather than relying on foot traffic alone. The Sunrise naming its stage after the person tied to both efforts isn't sentimental. It's an acknowledgment that the same kind of patient, unglamorous work is what keeps a small downtown's cultural anchors standing.

What the Name Actually Signals

The Kimberly dedication didn't happen in isolation. It's the visible marker of a longer institutional turn that started roughly a year and a half earlier, when the Sunrise Preservation Group hired Tim Russell as executive director at the end of 2024 alongside a rebrand of the theater's public identity. Russell brought in a new laser projector for screenings and live broadcasts, launched a community survey to gather feedback on everything from demographics to snack preferences, and began building toward what the organization has described as a financial management plan meant to carry the theater through the next 25 years.

None of that is the kind of news that makes a marquee. But it's the reason the Kimberly stage naming reads differently once you know the sequence. The stage is slated for improved lighting and sound systems, upgrades intended to serve a more vibrant live music scene rather than just accommodate the occasional concert between film screenings. Naming a stage after a donor and community figure is a familiar move for nonprofits investing in capital improvements. It signals to the rest of the community, and to future donors, that the building is planning for use, not just preservation.

That distinction matters for a theater with the Sunrise's history. Preservation kept the building standing through the 1980s. What Russell's team and the board appear to be building toward now is something more active: a venue that expects to fill more nights with live performance, not just protect the ones it already has.

What Changes on the Calendar

For residents who already treat the Sunrise as a regular stop, the practical question is what shows up on the schedule. The theater has long used its indoor and outdoor stages for an ever-changing lineup, including first-run and independent films, concerts, and community theater productions. During First Friday events, held the first Friday evening of the month from May through October, the Sunrise has hosted mini outdoor festivals with live music, food trucks, and family entertainment, spilling its programming out onto Broad Street itself.

With The Kimberly's lighting and sound upgrades aimed specifically at live music, it's reasonable to expect that side of the calendar to get more attention going forward. What that looks like in practice:

• More frequent live music bookings on the indoor stage, not just the outdoor First Friday events
• Better sound quality for the community theater and concert programming already on the schedule
• A stage now tied to a named benefactor, which nonprofits typically use as a signal to attract further capital support

None of this changes what the Sunrise has always been for downtown Southern Pines, a gathering place that's outlasted a hardware store's original purpose, a chain theater's ownership, and one serious brush with the wrecking ball. What's changed is the intent behind how it's being run. A theater that survives on preservation alone eventually runs out of goodwill. One that reinvests in its own stages, tied to the people who've already proven they'll show up for it, is making a different kind of bet on its next 85 years.

If you've spent time at the Sunrise, whether for a First Friday concert or a quiet Tuesday screening, you already know why a building like this earns this kind of attention from the people who live around it. I've spent a long time paying attention to what keeps places like downtown Southern Pines feeling like themselves, and stories like this one are exactly why. If you'd like to talk about what's happening in this part of town, from the businesses to the neighborhoods around them, Bill Sahadi would say the same thing he always does: Let's Connect.