Wardrobe and Makeup

 

When the Walton Arts Center expansion is done, a wall of glass will line the southeast corner of the intersection of Dickson Street and West Avenue.

About 30 feet tall, L-shaped and as long as 100 feet, this glass facade will not only mark the boundaries of the center’s new luxe lobby, but will be the public face of the effort to make the facility relevant for another generation.

While the arts center is credited with transforming Dickson Street into a true entertainment district, the center still suffers from the fact that it sits back from the limelight, tucked catty-corner behind Tyson Plaza.

But after the renovation, the center will have a commanding position, and, in turn, probably spark yet another turnover along Fayetteville’s main drag.

“The expansion will be the catalyst for the next transformation of Dickson Street and solidify the Walton Arts Center as a premier performance and event destination,” said Peter Lane, the center’s president and CEO.

And that was the plan all along.

“Part of the strategy was to give it a presence and entrance on Dickson Street,” said Michael Tingley, a principal at Boora. “It’ll be very dramatic. It’ll be a glassy corner where you can see what’s going on inside.”

The associated 240-space parking deck and 14,500-SF administrative office, a city project headed by Baldwin & Shell Construction Co. of Rogers, are already underway. But work on the actual center does not begin until July 1, when the center “goes dark,” as Lane puts it, through October.

During that time, CDI Contractors LLC of Fayetteville, working behind an 8-foot plywood barrier surrounding the construction site, will start the 16-month process of rejuvenating the 23-year-old facility.

The center will reopen in November, host a full season while construction continues, and again go dark in 2016 from July through October. When it reopens the second time, the job will be done.

The entire deal amounts to about $33 million, with funding coming from city bonds and parking revenue, and donations from the Walmart Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc., Tyson Foods Inc., and the Sudduth family of Bentonville, among others.

Concentrated on one city block, the comprehensive upgrade should prove monumental not just for Fayetteville, but for all of Northwest Arkansas.

“The impact of such a large capital investment will allow Walton Arts Center to do more shows, more events and more programs, resulting in additional growth for our region,” Lane said. “We are excited about the impact this investment will have on our community and the arts.”

 

Complex Logistics

The biggest trick to the Walton Arts Center project was to find dedicated times for heavy construction while not sacrificing the center’s prime programming — the 2015-2016 Broadway Series.

Project planners also had to figure out how to continue building once the Broadway season begins. It took a lot of number crunching and the use of eye-popping technology, but a solution was found.

CDI Contractors decided on two closures, one at the beginning of the project and one at the end for interior work, and exterior construction while the center is open.

In support of the 370-item construction schedule, CDI created a 3-D virtual model of the center, and that model, built and managed with Revit and Navisworks software, will serve as a visual benchmark for the entire project.

In preparation for actual construction, CDI has already finished the project several times in virtual reality. The goal is to know the job so well, and to already have equipment and material in place, so that when July 1 arrives, CDI and its platoon of subcontractors can attack the job and complete six months of work in three.

Matt Bodishbaugh, vice president of CDI, spoke to the difficulty of creating a construction schedule that includes an immovable deadline — the Nov. 10 debut of Tony Award-winning mega-hit “Pippin.”

“What we realized is that it’s not complex construction but complex logistics,” Bodishbaugh said. “It became a Rubik’s Cube to solve the logistics challenge.”

During the first closure, work will be done on things like bathrooms, ADA compliance, lighting, sound, theatrical riggings, and back-of-the-house feeds for the adjoining administrative building by Baldwin and Shell. During peak construction, as many as 200 people could be on site at any given time.

When the center reopens in November, CDI will transition to exterior work, adding 9,736 SF to the lobby, and 7,400 SF to Starr Theater. When the center again closes in July 2016, CDI will complete the job — finishing the interior of the new spaces, and tying them into the existing footprint.

“It will have the look and feel of a new building in all the common spaces,” Bodishbaugh said.

 

Black Box

When Boora developed the plans for the new center, it did so with a wealth of experience. The Portland firm’s portfolio includes the Bass Concert Hall in Austin, Texas, the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Davis, and the Portland Center for the Performing Arts.

One of only a handful of firms nationwide that designs performing arts centers, Boora employed Fayetteville firm Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects for on-site management.

The expansion includes plenty of eye appeal like the Starr Theater lobby, the atrium lobby and the 600-SF garden room addition, but a lot of the work — new spaces for wardrobe and makeup, laundry facilities, instrument storage, a shop and crew lounge — will likely never be seen by patrons.

The way the facility is currently configured, Starr Theater, the so-called “black box” venue for smaller productions and events, serves as a de facto storage facility for the bigger shows. But with the renovations, Walton Arts Center will have the ability to host performances in Baum Walker Hall and in Starr at the same time.

Due to ADA requirements, the 1,201-person seating capacity for the center’s main venue, Baum Walker, won’t really change. But the balcony, the lobby, and the concert hall, including the orchestra pit, will be more accessible for the disabled.

Theatrical rigging installed during the renovation will also allow for props to literally fly out over the crowd.

While the current lobby can get tight during big shows, the expanded lobby will be so spacious that the center can host galas there. And while the current balcony is not visible from the lobby floor, under the new configuration, patrons can look up and see the existing mural, the 5-by-9-foot “Intermission,” by local artist Ken Stout.

David Swain, a contractor and representative of the center, is charged with serving as liaison between the parking deck and arts center projects, the respective contractors, and the associated teams of architects, engineers and subcontractors.

He’s grown a few gray hairs in the last few months, and he admits the lead-up to construction has been trying. But he said the worst is behind them.

“It has been coordinating a multimillion [dollar] project on one city block with two contractors, two projects, and keeping the building up and running,” he said. “I think we’re through the hardest part, which was the design and raising the funds. Now we just have to finish.”