Look for the octagonal brick building with white windows on Dublin-Granville Road. That is the Jeanne B. McCoy Community Center for the Arts, known around New Albany simply as the McCoy.
Inside the octagon
The theater seats about 750 in a horseshoe layout, wrapped by an oval lobby with an education wing on one side and a rehearsal wing on the other. The horseshoe pulls the seats around the stage instead of stacking them in long straight rows.
The calendar runs from the New Albany Symphony Orchestra and the New Albany Ballet Company to touring concerts, speaker series and school performances. It is a community arts center first, so the touring bookings sit alongside a lot of local programming.
A community build
The McCoy opened in 2008 as a partnership between the City of New Albany, Plain Township, the New Albany-Plain Local School District and the New Albany Community Foundation. It anchors the New Albany Learning Community campus, and that shapes the parking.
Parking rules
The lots around the McCoy belong to the campus, not the theater. They open to McCoy patrons on weekday evenings after 4 and all day on weekends, and cars parked there earlier on a school day can be towed. Spaces are first come, first served. Accessible parking is in the lot off Main Street.
From Columbus, State Route 161 runs east from the I-270 outerbelt straight into New Albany, and Dublin-Granville Road brings you to the door.
Before the show
A footbridge through Rose Run Park connects the school campus to Market Square, where New Albany keeps a cluster of restaurants and shops. Park once, eat, and walk over. If you are mapping out other suburban rooms, the McConnell Arts Center in Worthington runs a similar mix on a smaller stage, and our jazz and blues calendar covers the kind of shows that sound best in a room like this.