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RENOVATION 2011 UT Center for Performing Arts
Excitement and
anticipation are in the air in the University of Toledo Center for Performing
Arts, where a $2 million renovation project that will progress over the summer
broke ground the week of April 25, 2011. The CPA, which is home to the Department of Music and
the Department of Theatre & Film, will experience some external changes,
but the most dramatic changes will be to the interior.
Faculty and staff have already begun packing, as the entire building will be closed during the project. Faculty and staff who would normally be in the CPA over the summer will be moving their offices to the Scott Park Campus Faculty Annex, but will still be available at the same phone numbers and email addresses. They are expected to move back into the CPA in mid-August, right before students return to campus for fall semester.
The renovation project is designed to make the best possible use of the existing building. While there will be some expansion externally, it is limited. On the inside of the building, walls will be moved and spaces demolished and re-built to better serve the needs of the students and faculty.
The goal of the renovation has always been to improve laboratories and classroom space for two programs: music and film/video. Theatre and Film Department chair, Jim Hill adds, “Both programs had clearly outgrown their labs many years ago and the University has finally pulled the funds together to make this renovation possible. Theatre is benefiting from the renovation because the theatre program needed to vacate strategic spaces to allow for the construction of the digital video and equipment storage spaces. By giving up centrally located space and changing the layout of the production end of the building, theatre benefits from the construction with new dressing rooms and greenroom and a renovated and expanded scene shop and design classroom.”
The Theatre & Film Department’s scene shop will essentially be rebuilt and re-oriented, extending into an area that is currently outside the building. This change will open up interior space, allowing for the creation of a backstage area that will include two dressing rooms, a green room, and a light lock area outside the Center Theatre.
Right now the dressing rooms and green room are in an area across the hall from the Center Theatre, not backstage. The current green room will remain a student lounge, but the adjoining make-up lab and dressing rooms, along with an office and a small computer lab, will be demolished and rebuilt into the Film Equipment Storage & Checkout area and the Digital Media classroom lab. The computer lab will be moved to vacated space on the second floor.
Currently, the Theatre & Film Department lobby is little more than a hallway just outside the Lab, Studio and Center theatres. Several offices on the first floor, just outside the Center Theatre, will be demolished to create an enlarged lobby and gathering space. “This will allow us to have an attractive place to hold receptions after plays and other events held in our theatres. For instance, when we have had a guest artist, which we often do, we really lacked a good place to host a reception for them. This will allow us to do that.”
The Department of Music will also see its spaces enjoy major improvements. The Recital Hall, where a large number of concerts and events are held each year, will be renovated. The stage will be rebuilt and a sound wall will be constructed at the back of the stage to improve acoustics. Seats will be recovered, carpeting will be replaced and the hall will be repainted.
An outdoor courtyard
area will be filled in to create a two-story addition that will house a number
of things. On the first floor, an improved reception area will be created,
along with space for offices displaced from other areas. In addition, the
choral practice room will be shifted and expanded. This shift will also allow
for expansion of the band/orchestra room, as well as the creation of larger
storage areas for instruments and other items.
On the second story, larger spaces will be created for the music lab and the recording studio, which will also have improvements within it to enhance sound quality. The piano lab will stay in the same general area but the room will be expanded.
Office space will also be set aside in the CPA for the dean of the newly-formed College of Visual & Performing Arts, Debra Davis, in order for the Dean to be accessible to students and faculty on main campus. The dean’s primary office is currently in the Center for the Visual Arts, which is located next to the Toledo Museum of Art.
