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Shea's presents 30-year historic restoration consultant with Lifetime Legacy Award
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — Shea's Performing Arts Center has named historic restoration consultant Doris Collins the 2025 recipient of the Michael Shea Lifetime Legacy Award, the theatre group announced. She was presented with the award at the Shea's Gala on June 6, a date also marking the 70th anniversary of her arrival in the U.S. from Austria.
Collins, who began working in the role in 1995 has led Shea's Buffalo Theatre's restoration efforts for the past 30 years. With over $15 million invested into the restoration, Collins used her expertise and research skills to work with suppliers and ensure the theatre could be restored to exact specifications.
Additionally, Collins is a teacher at Villa Maria, educating students of the school's interior design program for the past 15 years. She also established a restoration volunteer program at the theatre to help with efforts throughout the lobbies and stairwells of Shea's.
The award is named after the founder of Shea's Buffalo Theatre, Michael Shea, who operated a total of 12 theatres in Western New York.
'Over the last 30 years Doris has been the driving force behind every perfectly matched crystal, paint, and fabric here at Shea's,' Shea's Performing Arts Center president and CEO Brian Higgins said in a release. 'Her recruitment and expert training of restoration volunteers and students has saved Shea's millions of dollars. Thanks to the meticulous efforts of Doris over the last three decades visitors today step into this theatre as it was — or I would argue even better than it was — 100 years ago.'
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