The cold rain may have kept many cozily indoors, but the people under the Woodward Opera House roof were busy readying for an end-of-the-year deadline.
The restoration of the Woodward Opera House, a project over two decades in the making, is nearing the completion point. On Tuesday, Pat Crow, project construction manager, led a group comprised of local media through the nearly finished four floors of the 1800s building.
The structure, consisting of two buildings, will house 25,000 square feet of leasable space, including three small retail spaces in the basement. Visitors will be able to shop at retail and commercial businesses on the first floor while the second floor will house office space. The third floor will act as an art space complete with the primary entrance for the opera house, dressing rooms, and a green room. The promenade on the fourth floor will not only feature an art gallery, but will also act as an entrance for the opera house’s balcony seating.
A 4,000 square foot commercial community kitchen is also being built in the basement.
“People who want to process foods, they want to make sauces, they want to bake pies, they want to come in in July and fast-freeze their blueberries so they can sell them all year long, so they can freeze them – we have all those facilities here in this building,” Crow said. “Mount Vernon will literally be a one-of-a-kind community in Ohio, for sure.”
There are still a number of items to be checked off when it comes to the kitchen, but right now the focus is on the retail and office spaces and the opera house itself.
“We are in the last six to eight weeks of trying to race to get done with certain thresholds by the end of the year,” Crow explained. “We have obligations because of the nature of the funding and financing on the project – we have scheduled completions we have to meet.”
Crow cautioned, however, that the Dec. 31 deadline did not mean they had to occupy the theater by the end of the year.
“The plan is to reach the historic restoration part of the project by the end of the year. The temporary or partial occupancy will be done by the end of the year, which means our life and safety elements will be complete – staircases, fire alarms, sprinkler systems. Tenant improvements will not be done,” Crow said. “It’s like any build out in a shopping center – you get the building done, you get the shell permit and the tenant comes in and does improvements.”
The first floor will be fully occupied when 2018 rolls around. Nearly all the office space has been leased on the second floor as well, while some additional space is available on the third floor. Only one basement retail space has been leased at this point.
“We actually don’t have a lot of unleased space here. They’re almost all leased out. And we haven’t advertised or anything,” Crow laughed in disbelief. “It’s actually kind of cool.”
On Tuesday, painters worked throughout the building, adding a fresh coat of purple paint to one of the top floor bathrooms or putting on the finishing touches to the window trimsthat surround the opera house balcony. Risers were also being framed up, boards and electrical cords scattered across the floor.
A medallion was recently installed in the ceiling piece by painstaking piece with the painted details being brought out in relief. A chandelier, replicated from an 1890 photo and currently sitting in storage awaiting the moment to light the hall, will crown the room.
By this time next year, even the facade of Woodward Opera House will appear slightly different. The storefronts, which mostly date to the 1960s, will be updated with a “contemporary, but compatible” appearance in compliance with the Ohio Historic Preservation Office.
Several hundred workers have walked the floors and climbed the steps as the project has progressed, sometimes up to 70 workers coming in and out the doors on any given day. It has been nonstop work and Pat and Sandy Crow have been there overseeing it every step of the way.
“Sandy and I have been on the project since 1993,” said Pat Crow. “We got a great team . . . we have a team of volunteers and a number of very supportive donors in the community.”
The current portion of the project clocks in at an estimated $15.5 million, but with soft costs – architect plans, project manager wages, and more – it will top out around $22.5 million. Another $7 million will be tacked on as part of transactional costs from tax credits, a funding avenue that Crow said they needed.
“I can profoundly tell you, if it wasn’t for tax credits, I don’t think this project would be possible in Mount Vernon,” Crow said. “In Columbus raising $30 million is probably not a big deal. In Mount Vernon or Knox County, $5 million is a big deal. I’m sure this is the largest non-institutional project this community has ever seen and may ever see in the foreseeable future.”
In the meantime, the Woodward Opera House restoration project continues.
“I’m somewhere between the panic of trying to get it done by Dec. 31, and what’s going to happen after that is going to be one of the most remarkable things that’s ever happened in Mount Vernon. It’s going to be really cool.”
More information about the Woodward Opera House can be found at www.thewoodward.org.
