Like giant toppled, red dominoes, the old auditorium seats of the Porter County Memorial Opera House lay shingled over each other Tuesday morning after being unbolted from the floor.
Actor Eric McCann dismantled several to take home to his basement as souvenirs from shows past.
MOH Technical Director Stretch Miller helped him carry some out the door. “We finished ‘Beautiful’ on Sunday, tore down the set, and started loading up the truck getting everything out,” Miller said of the transition to interior renovations that are expected to wrap up by August.
Exterior tuckpointing is complete. New steps and walkways near the old coal chute are all that’s left of the exterior work. Additionally, the entire heating and cooling system is being replaced, as well as all new windows and exterior doors.
Indoors, walls separating the box office and lounge from the entryway will be removed and the space expanded north to the arch. Bathroom finishes will be updated, though spaces not enlarged. “For the Carole King musical we literally had a line all the way around to that corner,” said Miller of the line for the women’s bathroom that snaked from the bathroom in the hall into the auditorium space.
In the performance space, the ceiling will be cleaned with its floral designs and the original proscenium, which looks like an ornate picture frame around the stage, preserved.
“A lot has changed since then,” said Miller of the original 1893 construction. “There used to be about four rows that hung off the walls,” he said of box seats that used to line the length of the auditorium but were removed in the 1950s.
The renovation has been a long time in coming, with elected officials having haggled for six months over how extensive to make them. At the end of 2022 the Porter County Board of Commissioners had a plan for more significant renovations that included joining the MOH with the neighboring Sheriff’s Residence by way of a contemporary glass and metal addition and creating accessible bathrooms.
The Porter County Council had appropriated $5 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act grant money toward the project, but when Commissioners Vice President Barb Regnitz, R-Center, took office in January 2023, she and Commissioners President Jim Biggs, R-North, refused to go along with the expanded plan that had an estimated total price tag of upwards of $9 million. The council unappropriated the money and gridlock ensued.
Eventually, the two bodies agreed to stay within the $5 million funding stream and work has been focused on the exterior until now. “There are a lot of people out there – and my guess is overwhelming – upset that we spent that kind of money on it,” Biggs said. “Their attention is on roads, bridges, police protection. It seems like everybody is operating on a shoestring.”
Not long after McCann carted his seats home, the Board of Commissioners held its monthly morning meeting and reassigned $411,952 of the ARPA money from the MOH budget to other county concerns as the scaled-down project is coming in under budget.
“The reason we were able to do that is the bids came in much lower than expected,” explained Scott Cherry, of Skillman Corporation, which is managing the renovation.
He said the $250,000 contingency budget is still at the ready for surprises along the renovation. “We don’t know of any now, but we know they’re there,” Cherry said.
“Guys and Dolls,” as well as three concerts, had to be canceled to allow for construction so $104,000 of the budget savings will be used for revenue replacement. The balance will go for a new audio system for the county’s judges that was directed by the state in an unfunded mandate that went into effect Jan. 1 and has to be updated by the end of the year.
Loss of revenue was already an issue because of the pandemic. “We have not fully recovered from COVID along with art spaces from across the region,” said Commissioner Laura Blaney, D-South.
Miller said attendance is on the upswing. “We were sold out almost every day,” he said of “Beautiful,” the musical about the life of Carole King.
He said the 12 holiday performances of “White Christmas” were close to being sold out. “We have a new business director and a new marketing director and they’re still trying to get their grooves,” said Miller.
The now-former seating capacity was 350. When the new burgundy velvet and brown wood seats arrive in mid-June, that will shrink to 329, as they are more generous in size. The Memorial Opera House Foundation has agreed to pay for the seats and also is hoping to fund more accessibility changes with a capital campaign that’s about to launch.
“I know they would like to make it so the stage is accessible,” Blaney said, explaining that The Penguin Project, an inclusive theater program for children, currently has to run its rehearsals and performances at The Boys and Girls Club.
“They deserve it. They work hard,” she said of the kids being able to access a real theater stage.
Even with planned help from the foundation, Biggs said the MOH needs to diversify in its next chapter.
“We’re going to have to find more uses for that building if we’re going to continue to own it,” he said.
Shelley Jones is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
