Features: What We Build — March/April 2005

All the World's a Stage

Renovation of a historic theater in Connecticut revives an aging town center

By Sheila Bacon

Though Tony Bennett may sing of leaving his heart in San Francisco, some may wonder if it wasn't instead Waterbury's Palace Theater where the crooner longed to return. Bennett was the last act to take the stage in the historic Connecticut venue before it closed its doors in 1987, and he performed at the reopening of the theater last November following a multi-million dollar renovation. Bennett's kick-off concert symbolized the end of more than three years of intense construction at the theater and the start of a new life for downtown Waterbury.

Paired with new construction of the adjacent 220,000-sq-ft Waterbury Arts Magnet School, the Palace Theater renovation represents a strong commitment by the city and its residents to Waterbury's economic future. The goal of the $130-million project was to breathe life back into Waterbury, a city of 107,271 residents that had seen declines in population and economic activity in recent years. Spearheaded by the Naugatuck Valley Development Corp. and the State of Connecticut Bond Commission, the effort seems to be paying off.

More than 2,000 students applied for 550 openings at the school last fall, says Alan Kramer, the school's principal, and the theater is booked with Broadway shows such as Stomp and Rob Becker's Defending the Caveman.

"An area that once looked somewhat disheveled now looks gorgeous," says Kramer. "When you remove a negative and bring in a positive, the area becomes a magnet."

Creating a Landmark

The road to the project's success has been a long one-at times rocky, but interesting. Construction started in December 2001 and was completed with the start of classes at the school last September. The theater reopened two months later.

Along the way, the project team painstakingly rebuilt the theater's intricately designed interior, rerouted Waterbury's Great Brook from its path immediately beneath the original orchestra pit and created an arts-focused learning center that serves not only as a magnet for students throughout the region but also for the surrounding community.

Located in downtown Waterbury along the city's Main Street, the school and theater encompass four city blocks near Waterbury's Town Green-a burgeoning area becoming known for its new shops, restaurants and businesses.

The sheer size of the school and theater, approximately 265,000 sq ft, and its varied complexities put the project in a class by itself. The involvement of dozens of consultants, financiers, designers and subcontractors required the creation of specific procedures and protocols to ensure that the detailed project got off to a successful start. Both arms of the project were overseen by construction manager TBI Construction Co., New Britain, Conn., a member of the Connecticut chapter of the Associated General Contractors. "Our mission-critical was document management," says Ali Mohamedi, TBI's vice president.

Twenty-five TBI staffers were tasked with managing contracts, defining protocols, creating documents, streamlining work flow and documenting meetings-twice the number of people normally needed to manage the construction of a typical high-rise office tower, says Mohamedi.

Dirt first started moving with construction of the school's educational arts building, followed by its connected performing arts building. Once the first one was nearing completion and the second foundation was poured, interior demolition began on the Palace Theater.

Borrowing Architecture

The Waterbury Arts Magnet School's educational arts building features an open atrium surrounded by classrooms, as well as a gymnasium and cafeteria. It is connected to the educational arts building via an enclosed, elevated walkway.

A photographic survey of building facades in the Waterbury area helped define the design of the new school, says David King, vice-president of the architecture firm Kaestle Boos Associates, New Britain, and the project's principal-in-charge. The neoclassical elements of the Palace Theater, such as cornice work and brackets, also appear in the school's facade, and the structure's varied shades of brick are borrowed from the design of neighboring buildings.

In an attempt to minimize the scale of the large school, the buildings were constructed at varied heights-one story in some places, four stories in others. A facade that reaches out to the street in some areas and pulls back in others helps to further define a friendlier appearance, as does the use of various materials such as brick, precast concrete, slate and metal roofing and glazing.

"Because the school is in an urban environment, it needed to relate to people on foot," says King. "It was important to the owner and to us that the school-which is a big building-not look like a big building."

The school's educational arts building includes an open atrium surrounded by classrooms, as well as a gymnasium and cafeteria. Connected to the educational arts building via an enclosed, elevated walkway, the performing arts building includes several small performance halls, performance studios, dance and recital halls and a courtyard for outdoor performances.

The original program suggested fewer but larger spaces, which was discouraged by the architect's theater consultant, Martin Vinik of Martin Vinik Planning for the Arts, Saugerties, N.Y. "In projects such as this, which involve the education of young performers, you typically want to provide them with smaller spaces tailored towards their particular needs," says Vinik. "You don't want to put them in a position where they've got to compete in a setting that is too demanding for them to fill. To put a young actor on stage in 1,200-seat theater is very, very difficult, but a 250-seat theater is really the right kind of scale for them."

The school's design speaks to the concept of creativity in non-verbal ways, says Kramer. "The school is very open, very bright and very colorful," he says. "The thing Kaestle Boos knew from the very beginning is that when you create an environment that feels very open, it encourages the staff and the students to be very creative."

Spaces such as the school's four-story atrium have been host to impromptu poetry readings and musical performances. "The openness of the environment encourages things like that," Kramer says. "There's a subliminal message that says: 'Use this place to be creative in it.'"

The school is physically connected to the Palace Theater by hallways and programmatically by an overlapping curriculum. The school's performance spaces immediately abut the theater, and both facilities share exit corridors, dressing rooms and some support spaces.

The proximity of the theater, attached to the performing arts building at its east wall, allows students to work closely with theater technicians as well as performers through presentations and workshops as they pursue an arts-focused education. "The collaboration is truly an opportunity for students to take a professional theater and use it as a tool," says Vanessa Logan, director of education and community initiatives for the Palace Theater. "Sound engineering, for example, is truly an art in and of itself. [The synergy between the school and theater] allows for an appreciation and a level of awareness that most students wouldn't otherwise get."

The regional middle school/high school draws students from five school districts throughout the Waterbury area by using a lottery-style system. The school serves students in grades six through 10 for the 2004/05 school year, expanding to include 11th and 12th graders over the next two years, with an expected capacity of 800.

Resurrecting the Past

While the school is a work of art in its own right, the renovation of the neighboring Palace Theater has received the lion's share of the project's attention, for good reason. Creating a competitive and effectively functioning performance space from a venue that had been in a state of considerable disrepair for more than a decade required ingenuity and creative solutions from the entire design and construction team.

The theater had been closed for about 14 years when construction started. But the absence of previous add-ons, upgrades and space reconfigurations worked to the architects' advantage.

"There had not been a lot of unsympathetic renovation work, so we had a lot to go on," says King.

Originally built in 1922 as a venue for vaudeville shows and silent movies, the theater's layout required considerable reworking to accommodate modern-day performances. When the theater was new, performances repeated themselves throughout the day, with patrons continually coming and going.

Today, theatrical performances are more structured. Since the theater's restrooms and lobby would be filled to capacity with theatergoers before and after the performances and during intermissions, both had to be enlarged. Architects borrowed a portion of the orchestra level space to expand the theater's lobby, and restrooms were upgraded and repositioned.

More than 2,000 students applied for 500 openings at the Waterbury Arts Magnet School when it started last fall.

The theater's stage was also rebuilt and the back-of-house area renovated to house additional flywheels, pulleys, lifts and other crucial equipment.

A modern theater needs more than additional leg room to accommodate today's sophisticated and often technical performances, however. The decision to replace the theater's stationary orchestra pit with a larger, elevating pit would considerably upgrade the facility for use by nationally recognized shows, but would pose perhaps the most difficult challenge of the entire project for the design and construction team.

Waterbury's Great Brook, an underground river that runs beneath much of downtown Waterbury, passed through the center of the theater and directly underneath the proscenium. To construct the elevating orchestra pit, crews from site development contractor Manafort Bros. Inc., Plainville, Conn., first had to divert the brook, which flowed through a 12-ft by 6-ft culvert.

A complex hydraulic pumping system was installed to protect against possible overflows while the new culvert was being built (see related sidebar), says Manafort's project manager, Mark Gionfriddo. Once the new culvert was constructed, tie-ins were completed, paving the way for the elevating orchestra pit and new basement beneath the stage.

A 'Cool' Building

While heating and cooling methods have changed greatly since 1920, designers found a way to incorporate much of the theater's original ductwork in a modern heating, ventilating and air-conditioning system. The old theater's cooling system consisted of cold air originating from blocks of dry ice in the theater's basement entering the seating area through openings in the aisles. The air then would exit the seating area through decorative grills in the ceiling where a propeller fan behind the projection booth would vent the air out of the building.

The dry ice and propeller fan are long gone, but designers from vanZelm Heywood and Shadford Engineers, West Hartford, Conn., the project's mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire protection consultant, were able to use the existing ductwork and air vents for a modern-day heating and cooling system by reversing the air flow. They installed new systems and controls that force air down through the existing ceiling grills and return it to the HVAC plant through the original vents in the floors.

Installing mechanical and electrical conduit above the theater space proved to be a challenge, says TBI's Mohamedi. Large ductwork was threaded through the attic space between the roof and the theater's suspended ceiling. Since the floor of the attic was the fragile, plaster ceiling of the theater, crews had to use an elaborate scaffolding system to traverse the area.

A multi-level planking system was hung from clamps attached to the roof beams. Straps passed between the planks and were isolated and protected with plywood so the straps could move independently of the platform. Once in place, the staging facilitated the installation of new ductwork, catwalk steel and new electrical systems for the stage lighting and sound systems.

Certain controls were carefully camouflaged throughout the heavily decorated theater, says Robert W. Aube, a vanZelm associate and project manager. Sprinkler heads are hardly discernable in the theater's ornate ceiling.

Designing the HVAC controls to simultaneously accommodate a packed theater, student rehearsals and academic classrooms was no easy task, requiring a balancing act of pressure relationships between the stage and the house, says Aube.

The space needs to be cooled, but fluttering of stage curtains and draperies would be a theatrical faux pas. Separate air-handling systems for the theater, balcony, stage and lobby were designed, each operating independently.

Special accommodations also were required to ensure no HVAC-related sounds would interfere with performances. To save space, the theater's mechanical room was built in the adjoining school and all services were routed above and integrated with the existing ceiling.

While the project's entire mechanical, electrical and plumbing system was designed to take advantage of utility rebate programs for energy conservation, perhaps the most sustaining aspect of the project was the fact that an enormous part of the city's past was brought back to life. "We were able to rescue a historic treasure that was perilously close to being unsalvageable and revive it in a manner that allowed it to become a source of education, entertainment and a major contributor to the economy of downtown Waterbury," says Aube.

Gilding the Palace

The goal of many historic restoration projects is to exactly replicate previous designs, that was not the goal in the Palace Theater project, according to King. The interior's original decor featured significantly contrasting colors designed to coordinate with low-light levels emitted by chandeliers and bare bulbs. Sophisticated lighting designs available today are much more forgiving.

"The color schemes in the original building were conceived to sympathize with the type of lighting in old theaters," says King. "Now we can use a more muted palate that creates the same effect." Painters from Conrad Schmitt Studios Inc., New Berlin, Wis., added the sophisticated finishing touches to the interior of the theater.

Original ornamentation crafted in the Renaissance Revival style was cleaned, gilded, painted and polished, and new elements were created in similar style (see associated sidebar). Two parking garages-a 300-car structure for the nearby University of Connecticut branch campus and 1,100-vehicle garage for the Palace Theater-along with reconfigured streets, new sidewalks and revised traffic signalization completed the multi-faceted project.

While the Waterbury Arts Magnet School and renovated Palace Theater are still in their first year of operation, their initial success gives supporters reason to believe that they will continue to thrive.
"We're looking at a long-term symbiosis to turn this area into a learning corridor for the arts and education," says Kramer. "The future looks very bright."