Good food, fine drink and elves
After doing some of their favorite sections (and ranting about some of their favorite audience stories), we all strolled over to the theatre. It was enormously exciting to us to see people's reaction to the space. Walking though it is a significantly different experience than seeing it in pictures (although those are pretty cool). I realized that I haven't posted any updates about the building, so that's the very next post I'm doing. Today. Tomorrow. Real Soon Now. It's kind of awe-inspiring to see the space emerging, and I loved showing it to our guests. And I'll share it here. In my defense, organizing lunch for 40 and arranging to tow a roast pig down the highway still cooking really sucks the time up.
There was so much excitement at the benefit. We found it completely reinvigorating to talk to our supporters and the resident company members who came to see the sneak peek. Seeing peoples enthusiasm for what the empty space promises convinces me that this project is exactly what our community of artists, staff and audience needs.
Few days. Big post. All about the new space. Maybe a few words about Santaland. I promise.
Week 2: Where walls will be
a view from the house of theatre one. the trenches mark the interior walls. More pics in our Week 2 Gallery
OK, we don't have "walls" per se. What we are doing this week is creating a space in which walls can exist. In essence, the entire building is bisected along the north/south axis with one huge wall that separates Theaters 1 and 2 from the public spaces and Theater 3. The ditch that the crew is working in on the left is where the dressing rooms will be. The longer trench marks the position of the largest primary wall. The roof of the building is quite high (as much as 24' above grade at its top), so these walls are going to be quite big and heavy. In addition, they need to be pretty serious about sound insulation from the lobby and the other space. There are a lot of different wall construction techniques we are using in the new building.
The key insulating walls are being built out of concrete block and dry wall. This combination is cheaper than six layers of dry wall to achieve the same sound insulation factor, but is also heavier due to all the concrete. To keep these walls from shifting (and toppling), they get anchored to the floor with metal rods sunk into the ground with new concrete poured around them to keep the entire wall immobile. So, the steps are as follows:
1 Cut into the concrete slab so we make space for the anchors
2 Set the anchors and pour new concrete around them
3 Build the concrete block walls on the anchors
4 Put drywall and insulation around the concrete walls.
So, this week was spent cutting the trenches for the anchors. Actually, most of this week was also taken up by our continuing difficulties with the floor. After completing the survey, we found that the existing floor essentially ripples up and down like crazy. There is a 10" difference between the topmost point and the lowest, and it doesn't slope evenly to a single point. Further complicating the issue is that fixing it will require three different types of material: two different types of concrete and something called Laserflow. You use the different grades of material depending on the depth you are trying to even. So, for areas less than 1 1/2" deep you can use concrete (the cheapest). Any shallower and the gravel in the concrete is too likely to protrude, so you go to a finer grade. Finally, for the 1/2" areas, concrete variants won't do it as they are too likely to crack when poured that thin, so you use this other product called Laserflow which spreads like a paste but dries like concrete.
Of course, all these different products have different (and increasing) prices. And it's a lot of area. We estimate that we will need 6200 square feet of material to even the floor out. Even concrete, the cheapest, is about $3/square foot. Do the math, and it will cost about $21,000 to raise the whole slab, even if we go to great lengths to only use the more expensive materials where we must. Trent is going to reduce the amount of concrete required by cutting styrofoam blocks in the deeper areas and pouring the concrete over it, a standard industry practice, but even then we estimate the cost of our materials to be about $16,000. Included in our fixed bid was $4,000 in repairs for the slab, but that leaves the theatre with the remaining $11,000.
Hopefully when the job is costed, we can get the price closer to $2.85/square foot since there are cost savings as the contractor doesn't need to mobilize additional staff or equipment to pour _more_ concrete. Even so, that leaves the theatre with $10,000 of cash that we haven't budgeted. Hmmmmm....
Fortunately, our electrical bid was made without acknowledgement of our being tax-exempt. As we re-estimate it, the savings on the equipment purchases from same will be between $7,000 and $9,000. That brings us within spitting distance, so I'm going to put the cost overrun of this little item at $4,000 for the moment.
We also got a rough cost for the new iron pipe we found out about last week at $2,000. As I look, the extra time it took us to survey the floor has eaten up a day, plus one day lost due to late construction. I am told we are now two days behind, but that it will be made up next week. We'll see :)
Current score
Weeks in Construction: 2
Money committed/spent: $180,000
Days Behind: 2
Over Budget: $6,000
Week 1: Oh God, we're all gonna die!
Look, we found an old van under the mainstage! (not really). At this point, we can really examine the entire building to look for fun surprises.
The floor in the Bailiwick is remarkably uneven. We had noticed an decided slope in the hallway to the back of the building. Once we pulled out the walls, we could see that the floor was far more uneven than we had anticipated. The concrete guys mapped out a grid using cool little laser devices to check elevations. As it turns out, the floor has a variance of over 7 1/2" from its lowest to its highest point. But it's not an even grade, oh no. The floor bucks and twists, with whole portions raised above the grade, like this picture which is where the entrance to the mainstage used to be.
Conceivably, we could break up the concrete and repour the floor, or we can give up those 7 1/2" and raise the entire base. Our GC believes that the latter will be a small incremental cost, and one he will absorb as part of his bid, so hey--this is not only cheaper, but it solves another problem...
Yes, the alley is higher than the floor. Why do we care? One word: Rain. If we leave this unaddressed, water will pour into theatres 2 and 3 underneath the door every time it rains. Fortunately, by raising the floor and just building in slight rakes for wheelchair access in each entry alcove, we will have our theater safely above street level which should prevent the random flooding the old space was prone to.
When Rick (the architect) initially measured the building, he had to make a few assumptions because of lack of access to parts of the buliding filled with debris. One of these assumptions caused us to mis-draft the fire exit door on the back of the building. The existing door will be bisected by the wall separating Theater 2 from the Theater 3 dressing room. Fortunately, this is an optional door. We already had to add additional fire doors for the two spaces on the back of the buliding so we can just brick it in. I don't know how that impacts the plans we put in with the city, but Rick is looking into it.
We uncovered a catchbasin in the center of the building covered by concrete while the plumber was tracing pipes to prevent accidents when we sink the wall supports in. This is the original catchbasin whose purpose is to help filter out silt from the roof drainage. What we discovered was that the existing plumbing lines for the bathrooms run into this catchbasin, which goes a long way to explaining the occasionally rich odors floating up from the restrooms. The upshot is that we are going to have to lay new pipes to the front of the building, about 35 feet. This does add to my cost, so we'll see next week what the incremental cost is.
But, the most exciting news has been the trusses. In November, we had a structural engineer in to look at the existing trusses. Trusses are exciting things, as it turns out. They simultaneously keep the the walls and roof from collapsing. Plus they look cool. They look so cool, in fact, that the city won't let you build buildings with them anymore.
Actually, the city frowns on buildings engineered this way because it's hard to keep the trusses in good repair with the heavy snowfalls here in Chicago and the propensity of tenants to hang things on the trusses like light grids (the old tenant, not us). What this has done is start to bow the trusses slightly, and partially split one of them on the side. Apparently, one dramatic thing about trusses is that they are rarely overengineered for the weight of the roof. Therefore, if one truss collapes, the entire building collapses. Or so I'm told. When we first looked at the truss, one of the engineers sort of fled the building, but hey--he was an electrical engineer. The structural engineers were reassuringly bored and have provided a solution to keep us all from sudden, crushy death.
The bowing can be corrected by essentially building supports into the walls that stretch a metal cable that can be tightened annually to keep the walls supported, and the truss that's starting to give can be repaired. These repairs have been designed and we are currently looking in to bids to fix them. Fortunately, as this work will cost over $20,000, this is marked in the lease as one of the landlord's responsibilities. The Stameloses have been great supporters of this project, and the trusses should be fixed soon. But, there is a point where we may have to stop work to allow for truss repair to be completed. I'm waiting to see if there is an additional delay there.
Here's our progress so far:
- Schedule - 1 day behind
- Budget - $0 over, but could be several thousand dollars once we get the plumbing costs.
This coming week they will be cutting the concrete slab to do the pour and put in the fittings. It's looking awfully construction-y there!
Construction Begins!
this pic is also in the demolition gallery
I can’t tell you how excited I was to actually see work happening after almost 6 years of planning. This really has been a long road. I spent about three hours Friday morning putting up some signage in the front window and nominally meeting the subcontractors, but what I was really doing was watching the bobcats chew up the theatre like fucking tissue paper. I tell you, strike with one of these bad boys would take an hour. The above photo is from the old bailiwick shop after about an hour of work by one guy. Now, I did a clean up of this space in the early nineties, and it took three of us TWO WEEKS.
Here’s a video:
I mean seriously. How cool is that? (What you don’t get to see is the way five seconds after I took this video, the pile of platforms in front of collapsed toward me, taking out a part of the stairs and the work lights as I scrambled back. Also fun!)
I suspect demo is going to be one of the most exciting part this entire process since it’s so fast. And so full of possibility. The changes are dramatic. Here’s a picture of the space after only two days of work:
I must confess it was a little weird tearing down the stages that I had my first directing breaks on. Like so many others, I worked for Bailiwick Repertory. As an artistic associate from 1993 through 2004, some of my first full-scale directing experiences were at this theatre. First, in the directors fest while I was in college, and then in productions I still remember fondly like Henry VI: Blood of a Nation, and now then again. I’ve spent countless hours in this building working and seeing work. Watching it get cleared away was a curious mixture of glee and remorse. Watching demolition did reinforce my determination to transform this buliding into a truly beautiful place for the whole community to enjoy. Removing a theatre and not replacing it with an even better one sounds like a ticket to hell to atheistic ol’ me.
Lastly, here’s a video with really crappy sound I took on my iPhone showing where everything is going to be. For more pics, take a look at our gallery.
Three theatre visions
Those of you who've visited the bailiwick will see some common qualities here. The existing space is a smaller front lobby with a large hall that extends down the length of the building along the south side of the mainstage space. The above scheme cuts the mainstage in two and sacrifices the shop as I had asked. It will require a new door for fire exit in the new north space. This plan also gave a pretty large chunk of backstage area but the architect had to label it "dressing" as I couldn't tell what it was for. Access to it is limited to the first two stages.
Access to the north stage is a little odd, as it requires the audience to enter onto the stage space, something I really hate in performance spaces. Let the stage be it's own space, if we are doing something specifically to pull the audience in or through a performance space, fair enough, but don't force them to wander through every single stage to find their seats. Do we really want the audience wandering through pools of blood at the end of *Titus Andronicus?* No, thank you.
Tragically, the SW corner space is also too small. Even with the rough sketch, I can see that the stage is a) too shallow (16') and more significantly, b) without backstage or dressing rooms. Once we add those, we end up with a sort of mini-studio, with seating for 40-50 and a cozy stage. All very cozy, but not what I want. Of course the SW stage is much bigger but is quite deep.
Lastly, we added a backstage toilet. Absolutely critical in a space with so many venues and one of the more requested amenities over the years at Bailiwick. But this has it's own problems. I am worried about sound bleed but more concerned about access from the SW space, no matter how configured. How can we manage to get a backstage bathroom that's accessible for all three spaces without requiring passage through the common spaces?
Curiously, the bathroom makes me think in a whole new direction. I'm contemplating Disneyworld, where there are connected passages and tunnels that run parallel and under the existing attractions but are never in the public traffic pattern. Obviously, we can't drill down into the ground and build a huge underground complex (or lair). But we *can* hide an access corridor along the center of the building. I sketched out a terrible drawing of a space divided into three roughly equivalent theaters, with the remaining quarter of the building for public space.
A corridor would run down the center of the building, broken up by access corridors for audience traffic. The corridor could connect all the backstage spaces while still offering a nice, air-buffered passage to help prevent sound bleed between spaces.
This is where I confess to being a terrible artist. What's amazing is that Rick (the architect) can take these ideas and turn them into something workable. And that's what he goes off to do. Three spaces, roughly equal in size. We will lose the existing studio (and some of my under budget dreams have just vanished in a puff of smoke), but I hope we'll get a more workable flow. New marching orders:
- Corridor for backstage and tech movement
- No stage under 20' deep
- Don't forget dressing rooms for each space :)
- Keep a bathroom if we can.
Good luck, Rick!
