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Janesville PAC earns high praise

Janesville Performing Arts Center

By Brendan O'Brien

Photo courtesy of Michael David Rose Photography

The Janesville Performing Arts Center must have been shaking with opening-night jitters.

Tony Bennett was in the house, helping to christen the newly renovated auditorium in September. But the singing legend put everyone at ease when, midway through his performance, he told his musicians to take a break.

"He said this place here has some of the best acoustics of any place he had played in," said Bob Coleman, the J.P. Cullen & Sons project manager who oversaw the renovation project. "He was very complimentary about how good of a house it was acoustically."

The compliment came after J.P. Cullen's 18-month, $2.6 million renovation of the 640-seat auditorium. The project included replacement of old wooden seats, an extension of the original stage and a reconstruction of the existing balcony, which was extended into two loges. It also featured installation of state-of-the-art audio, lighting and mechanical systems.

But the project team balanced the modernization of the facility with plaster restoration work to match the existing ornate plasterwork and decorative painting of the original architecture.

That original architecture stretched back to the 1920s, when the auditorium was at the center of the Janesville High School building.

"It was a state-of-the-art high school," Coleman said. "So it is a beautiful structure with a lot of terrazzo hallways and floors and heavy, heavy oak trim."

The structure was converted into a middle school and then, 12 years ago, remodeled for apartments, with 55 classrooms becoming living quarters.

	Project Name: Janesville Performing Arts Center Location: Janesville Submitting Company: J.P. Cullen & Sons Inc., Janesville General Contractor: J.P. Cullen & Sons Inc. Architect: Engberg Anderson Design Partnership Inc., Milwaukee Engineers: City of Janesville Department of Engineering, civil engineer; IBC Engineering Services, Waukesha, electrical engineer; CMG & Associates Inc., Madison, plumbing and fire protection engineer; Graef, Anhalt, Schloemer & Associates Inc., Milwaukee, mechanical engineer; Harwood Engineering Consultants, Wauwatosa, structural engineer Owner: Stone House Development, Madison Project Cost: $2.6 million Start Date: December 2003 Completion Date: August 2004

"But what they left untouched was a core of the building, and the core of the building was the auditorium," Coleman said. "There was always a potential that it would have some further use down the road."

The effort to make good use of the auditorium began when a group of residents in Janesville collaborated to raise funds and garner community support for a much-needed performing arts center.

J.P. Cullen signed on during the design process and quickly discovered that one major challenge would be working within the confines of an apartment complex.

"All the while, we are sharing the same hallways with residents of the apartment building," Coleman said. "We had to literally carry materials in and out of stairways, entryways and hallways that were being used on a day-to-day basis by tenants."

Cullen worked with tenants to lessen the inconvenience caused by the work being done in the auditorium.

"We had to talk about when we were going to stage large deliveries," Coleman said. "That was our biggest challenge — to work around 55 fully occupied
apartments."

Other work that Cullen performed on the project included building a new boiler, installing new bathrooms, adding male and female dressing rooms and adding new storage space while moving temporary storage areas to the basement.