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At a special meeting held Monday by the Clinton School Board, an approximate $56,000 reduction in cost approved for lighting in the school’s new Performing Arts Center will keep the theater within budget and its opening on time.
“I wish we would have had this figured out with the lighting contractor before,” School District Superintendent Wes Golden said, “but this is where we’re at.”
The cost of lighting initially approximated at $170,000 and lessened to nearly $114,200, board president Mike House said, brings the cost of the theater portion of the high school reconstruction and renovation project to within $190,000 budgeted for contingencies.
“Working together with the lighting contractor and IMEG and FRK,” House explained, “they’ve decided that they can use some of the newer existing lighting from our current theater as well as a mixture of that with some new lighting that we have to have because of the size difference in our new theater.”
Golden stated that there had been concern about the necessity of multiple controllers in combining the lights of Vernon Cook Theater, which he said are a couple years old, with brand new lights.
“But that’s not the case,” he said. “It’s actually going to integrate well together. Those lights have already been removed from Vernon Cook, so there’s no additional cost of having to remove them. It’s just really — It worked out well.”
Golden stated in an email following the Dec. 23 meeting that, “There has been a tremendous amount of work done but still have many things to complete and install.”
Had the decision not been made until after the first of the year rather than during Monday’s special meeting held specifically for the consideration, House added, the opening of the theater planned for the end of February or the beginning of March would have needed to be postponed.
The current cost of the entire reconstruction and renovation project sits at about $57.6 million. The original contract sum of nearly $60.1 million had been funded by a $39 million bond referendum approved by 73.7% of voters in March 2020.
Designs for the project were completed after about a year into the COVID-19 pandemic which caused bids on the project to come in at about $8.8 million higher than what was originally anticipated. The project moved forward and ground was broken in June 2021 for the project designed by Frevert-Ramsey-Kobes Architects and Engineers out of West Des Moines and with Tricon Construction Group out of Dubuque hired as the general contractor.
To make up the difference in cost caused by inflation, a capital campaign with a goal to raise $750,000 was initiated by the CHS Band Boosters in June. A fall 2023 grant from the Clinton County Development Association of $450,000, the elimination of a fourth phase of the project, and 1% sales tax lessened the goal of the campaign to about $300,000.
In September, Golden stated that the campaign had resulted in more funding than what had been asked for. The excess is to go toward funding programs within the performing arts center.
When completed, the $21.4 million performing arts center that began being constructed in August 2023 will be an ADA-compliant theater that features a proscenium arch 22 feet in height and 48 feet wide, a fly loft ceiling that reaches 55 feet above the stage, a 580-square foot orchestra pit, 185 feet of catwalks, and seating for 872 people.
The school’s current Vernon Cook Theater, which seats about 700 people, was built after the original theater was damaged by a historic fire in 1968.
A live-video production system is to also be included, along with an HD-capable laser video projector and 21 wireless microphone receivers.
The elevator shaft leads up to the top of the theater balcony between sound and lighting rooms opposite a room intended for drama storage that has been built to accommodate the installation of a door large enough to allow for a vehicle to easily be brought through and placed as a prop onstage.
Performing arts students will be provided band, chorus, and orchestra rooms, along with dressing rooms and a green room that they lacked before.
The third phase of the project is to involve a larger cafeteria and new administration offices.
The project in its entirety is slated to be completed in 2025.
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