The Great Passion Play, with its famous Christ of the Ozarks statue, is a well-known Eureka Springs landmark.

And Monday was a landmark day for the Passion Play. Executive director Randall Christy delivered a check for $65,699.46 to Grand Savings Bank and officially paid off the play’s mortgage.

According to a Facebook post by Christy, Grand Savings refinanced the play’s mortgage a little more than two years ago and since that time, the play paid off more than $2 million.

Kent Butler, director of operations at the play, said paying off the mortgage was a combination of hard work along with some sound business decisions.

“It’s a collection of refinancing the debt, being able to take the number of shows that we had down from 110, 120 down to 70 or 80,” Butler said. “All of those were major differences in reducing overhead and us being able to focus on debt reduction.”

At the same time, Butler said, the play was able to focus on improving and enhancing its production. A major part of that was the installation of a quarter-million-dollar lighting system.

“Not just, ‘oh, that’s super nice,’ but state-of-the-art lighting,” Butler said. “Disney and Universal, these are the places that are using this same very powerful light. It makes a major difference for the entire show experience.”

Next up, Butler said, will be a similar investment in a top-of-theline sound system.

Butler said the play’s average attendance this year was its highest in 10 years. He also credited the work of volunteers, especially youth groups who have come to the grounds of the play on mission trips.

“People who haven’t seen the property in many years will see vast improvements everywhere they look,” he said. “And a lot of that is due to these youth groups coming in and serving for a week or a weekend. We had 403 mission trippers and 27 groups. So that’s been a part of the process.”