Page 14 - November 2017 inLEAGUE Resource Guide (Vol. 40, No. 5)
P. 14
resToring Your hisToric
TheaTre – where To sTarT?
By: Tom Tomlinson, Capital and Theatre District
Project Manager, Arts Council of Winston-Salem and
Forsyth County; Principal, tg2, Inc. & Highroad, Inc.
At the beginning, I always say – but where PLAN SOME MORE, AND THEN PLAN AGAIN.
is that? It goes without saying that every Involve as many members of your community
theatre is different, every community is – artists, arts organizations, potential users,
different and the barriers one has to cross business people, public officials and potential
to reach success are different in each donors as possible. All of these people will
situation. However, I have had the good be important to your project one day, and
fortune of restoring or building new about the last thing you want is to be accused of
ten theatre spaces planning your renewed
across the United facility without such
States, from Alaska input. Often planning
to Miami, Detroit to is not inexpensive; it’s
Southern California, always time consuming
as well as served and cumbersome, and
as a consultant for sometimes it’s politically
countless others, and difficult, but it is certainly
I seem to encounter less expensive than
comparable spending millions of
situations city to city, dollars on a facility
and the facts seem that turns out to be
to remain related something other than
despite the obvious differences in each what the community wanted or needed, or is
community and with each facility. improperly located, ill-sized or ill-equipped.
Remember the saying, “To a hammer, I have a personal prejudice – if you can
everything looks like a nail.” While I have afford to hire the individual who will take
enormous respect for architects -- and you through opening, and has the planning,
many of them have firms of sufficient size theatre building and initial management
to provide services from site selection to credentials – that is the individual you should
program planning, design and construction hire first. He or she will take you through the
administration -- remember that their goal is appropriate planning and organizational
to build something. Your job, as the theatre processes that will deliver a building that
owner must be to tell them what to build. is functional and meets the needs of the
And the road to making those decisions community. If you can’t start with a full-time
comes before any other. employee, there are a lot of different paths
you can venture down, but at the end of
While your project will certainly need the the day the resulting cost may not be less
services of an architect, and likely a theatre than starting with an experienced full-time
and acoustical consultant, among many Executive Director.
other design specialists, my first, second and
third rule in restoring an arts facility is to PLAN, In the beginning you must decide if this is
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