Building a little Carnegie Hall

By NANCY KIMBALL

The Daily Inter Lake

'World class' performance hall comes together in Whitefish

Terms such as "world class" and "state of the art" surface often in conversations with the Whitefish Middle School Auditorium and Performing Arts Center's visionaries.

Now, the public will get a good idea of what "world class under construction" looks like during a special open house next Friday.

From 4 to 6 p.m. Dec. 8, just as the Whitefish Christmas Stroll is getting under way, everyone is invited to visit the work site at Whitefish Middle School - better known to most as the historic Central School.

Its 1938 auditorium is being gutted and rebuilt into the new performance hall.

Swank Enterprises' work crew will make way for the stream of pre-stroll visitors as fundraising committee chairman Ross Anderson, fundraisers John Kramer, Richard and Carol Atkinson and others introduce the community to its new theater.

"It's a little Carnegie Hall," fundraising co-chairman Richard Atkinson said.

Without a doubt, Atkinson and the committee promise, it will be the best performance hall in Montana.

The theater features 16,000 air-conditioned and handicapped-accessible square feet, a bigger stage with taller fly loft for raising and lowering backdrops, comfortable seating for 490, high-tech control booth that even novice workers can operate, catwalks and acoustical clouds, and a windowed lobby with concessions and ticket booth.

Architects West of Coeur d'Alene designed the new performance hall, and Hunter and Co. of Whitefish did the interior design.

Knudson and Ward of Seattle, the same firm which designed acoustics, lighting and layout for Missoula Children's Theater, was hired for this project.

"Everybody has a (clear) line of sight," Anderson said. "There's not a bad seat in the house."

Stage-side seating will curve around the orchestra pit - which can be covered with panels to extend the fore-stage - and be slightly bowled up on the sides. An aisle behind those first seven rows provides the break for more-steeply sloped seating up to the top of the house, ending just beneath the control booth. Two floor-lit aisles run the length of the seating.

Lights and sound will be run from the control booth, but light bars will be installed in the stage as well. There will be two catwalks, the second one hidden above the stage within acoustical clouds.

Swank raised the roof over the stage an additional eight or 10 feet to accommodate what Atkinson called a "real" fly loft - one in which an entire backdrop can be raised and another dropped into place.

To create a state-of-the art sound design, an acoustical engineer took up residence in the hall at night, measuring reverberation and other building qualities when nobody else was around. With the help of acoustical clouds suspended from the ceiling, even the breathiest voice of the youngest actor will be heard clearly.

Outside, its brick facade - some retained from the original Central School, some restored in the original style - will tie in perfectly with the historic school. Swank's project manager Scott Bruner said interior demolition, while protecting the original 48-foot brick wall, presented significant challenges, but none that stumped his crews.

Inside, a classy art deco decor will carry out the 1930s theme.

The lobby and auditorium are situated directly above the Whitefish School District's administrative office suite, in the basement level of the middle school building.

When the performance hall opens in summer 2007, it will become the new home of Alpine Theatre Project, which now carries out its productions in the O'Shaughnessy Performing Arts Center. Glacier Symphony and Chorale will restart its former tradition of Whitefish season performances in the rebuilt school auditorium. Other groups will be scheduled from time to time.

But they all will play second fiddle to the students of Whitefish School District.

"First and foremost," Carol Atkinson said, "this is for the children of Whitefish, of all ages."

The school district will handle scheduling.

Atkinson's statistics show 151 students at Whitefish High School, a quarter of the student body, are enrolled in fine arts performance classes of orchestra, band, choir and theater arts. But, without an auditorium in the school, the choir performs in the gym and the band in the hallway, she said. Orchestra, new to the high school this year, has no rehearsal space. Neither does the theater program.

At the middle school, 168 students - 44 percent of the student body - take part in orchestra, band and choir, she said. The aging, small and acoustically challenged auditorium had been putting a serious cramp in their performance and rehearsal style for some time.

To bring the $4.7 million project to completion, the fundraising committee is working hard this winter to bring in the $2 million still needed by the end of November.

So far, more than 700 donors - children, families, staff members, businesses and others - have contributed $2.7 million. They have raised the money through the school's annual Dining for Dollars dinner event, one-time donations, five-year pledges, stock transfers and in-kind donations of materials or equipment.

The fundraising committee is offering the chance to donate in any number of amounts - from the $750,000 performance hall level all the way to the $10 friend level.

"We want higher-end donors now to challenge us to match their dollars," Carol Atkinson said.

It would step up their work load, but the committee agreed that they're ready for it.

All contributors will be noted on a permanent donor wall in the lobby. Room donors will be recognized with a permanent individual bronze plaque in their area.

To contribute, mail pledges or gifts to Central School Project, Whitefish School District, P.O. Box 4225, Whitefish, MT 59937.

Contact them by phone at 862-6228, or by fax at 862-8044.

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com