Flagstar Strand Theatre

When the Strand went dark at the end of the 1970s, it looked like one more lost movie palace — the kind of grand old room that gets demolished for a parking lot and mourned in faded photographs. Instead, after decades shuttered and a $20-million-plus restoration, it reopened in 2016 as the Flagstar Strand Theatre, and it’s now the centerpiece of downtown Pontiac‘s Saginaw Street. It first opened in 1921 to nearly 1,200 seats, designed by Pontiac architect Leo John Heenan and later reworked by C. Howard Crane — the same architect behind Detroit’s Fox. Today it’s a roughly 860-seat performing-arts house where every sightline is a good one, hosting concerts, comedy, and touring productions, with Charlene’s bar in the lobby and a summer Marquee series that spills live music right onto the street. It’s the sort of restored-jewel venue that makes a town feel like it’s taking itself seriously again — dress up a little, make a night of it, and pair it with dinner a few doors down. Firmly on our list as one of the anchors of Pontiac’s revival.